


A Song to Bring You Home

by halflinen



Category: Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Amnesia, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-22
Updated: 2009-03-22
Packaged: 2017-12-14 21:41:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 32,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/841687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halflinen/pseuds/halflinen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brendon loves all Jon Walkers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Song to Bring You Home

**Author's Note:**

> This is for my wonderful girlfriend who put up with my total crazy bullshit while I was writing this and let us not eat dinner until nine most nights so that I could finish "just one more part, I swear!". She also came up with the summary. 
> 
> Title ganked from Devendra Banhart's "At The Hop".

Brendon Urie meets Jon Walker on a crowded Chicago bus at the tail end of February. He nearly loses his balance when the bus takes a sharp turn, and only stays upright thanks to a lightning-quick hand that fists in his jacket. The scruffy guy attached to the hand insists Brendon take his seat. (“A gentleman’s gentleman!” Jon always crows whenever the story gets told.) 

They get off at the same stop after Jon swears, no really, he does live right around the corner, totally not a serial killer, swear. (Here Jon cites his natural charm and sincerity. Brendon always rolls his eyes and says, “I knew he wasn’t a serial killer because his phone rang and his ringtone was _Friend Like Me_.”) 

Jon carries two of the four instruments Brendon is lugging home, but it’s still slow-going, every surface covered in the treacherous half slush-half jagged ice mess that is synonymous with almost-spring. They talk the whole time—Jon shows Brendon pictures of his new kitten and tells him how he’s teaching it to fetch, and Brendon tells Jon about the lute and how it is totally a legitimate instrument and could kick the mandolin’s ass any day, no matter what Ryan says. When they finally part twenty minutes after arriving at the corner where their paths diverge, Brendon has Jon’s number in his phone, a fluttery feeling in his chest, and a grin that leaves his cheeks aching by the time he gets home. 

It’s a Friday and it’s one of the greatest days Brendon will ever have.

***

It’s a hot, muggy Tuesday afternoon in July, the kind of day where even naked skin is too hot. Jon grins at Brendon, his hair clearly what one would call sex-hair, and Brendon uses the tiny part of his brain that can still process thought to suppose that it would technically be an accurate description, given that Jon has just sucked Brendon’s spine out through his dick. “So I’ve been thinking,” Jon says.

“Mmmm,” Brendon hums, and threads his fingers into Jon’s hair to pull him down for a kiss. “Always dangerous,” he murmurs, and yelps when Jon delivers a sharp smack to his hip.

“Bite your tongue.”

“Why don’t you do it for me?” Brendon returns, and although there’s no tongue biting, the resulting make out is still pretty good. Brendon counts it as a win. He’s starting to feel like he’s ready to go again when Jon pulls back a little, mouth swollen, color high in his cheeks. Brendon wants to fuck him into the floor.

“You know, my lease is up next month.”

“Um. What?” Brendon is like some kind of sex maniac. He knows words are coming out of Jon’s mouth, but well, it’s _Jon’s mouth_ , and that’s kind of where his attention sticks. 

“My lease is up,” Jon repeats, oblivious to Brendon’s plight, and Brendon throws a mini internal temper tantrum— complete with mental stomping— before giving his head a little shake to try and concentrate on what Jon is saying. “I need to find a place to live.”

“Okay.” Lease expiring. Place to live. Check. Brendon is totally the best boyfriend ever, he can pay attention, look at him go.

“Don’t you rent this place monthly?”

Advice. Got it. Brendon is all over this. Ha. “Yeah, but dude, trust me. You do not want to live in this building. First, they don’t allow pets, so no Dylan, and second, there is a dog in the house next door that is like, on vocal steroids or something, it will not shut up, like, for anything. It’s like a 747 is parked outside, but with, you know, dog barking engines and nowhere to go.” Jon raises an eyebrow slightly, looking a little incredulous at this information, and Brendon continues. “I mean, not that it wouldn’t be kickass to live in the same building, just, you know, not this one.”

“I agree,” Jon replies, nodding seriously, and he’s staring at Brendon weird. “Not this one.” There’s a lot going on in the eye region. 

Brendon is confused. “I’m confused.”

“Christ, Urie, do I have to get down on one knee?” Jon asks, exasperated. 

“What? _Oh_.” Brendon’s mouth falls open and he thinks his eyes probably bug out a little. “You want to move in… together?”

“Well. Yeah.” Jon looks uncomfortable, squirmy. “What do you think about that?”

Brendon’s mind is stalled, like a car engine that refuses to turn over in the cold. He wants to say something that will make Jon stop looking so small and unsure, but he can’t get past the mantra of _Jon wants to move in together_ running through his head. “With _me_?” is what he comes up with. There’s an embarrassing little squeak at the end of it, and Brendon cringes on the inside. Smooth.

But the tense line of Jon’s shoulders melts away, and he flicks his eyes back up to Brendon’s. There’s even a hint of a smile tugging at his lips. “Yeah, Bren. With you.”

“I—Yeah. Of course, yeah. Yes.” There’s a smile stretched across his face and a laugh bubbling its way up from his belly and he can’t stop either of them even when Jon beams, bright and happy, and kisses Brendon like his stumbling, bumbling answer is the best thing anyone’s ever given him. 

“Way to almost ruin the mood,” Jon gripes good-naturedly in between kisses. Brendon can feel Jon’s smile against his own lips, dick hard against Brendon’s thigh, and thinks the mood is doing just fine.

“In my defense,” Brendon says, as Jon lays a broad hand flat on Brendon’s chest and pushes him back against the pillows, “you could have picked a time when my brain was a little less sex-addled.”

“Less,” Jon repeats doubtfully, like it’s the most absurd thing he’s ever heard. “That was my whole cunning plan.” His tone is low and playful and on second thought, Brendon is really ridiculously grateful for the break between rounds if this is what he gets for his patience. 

“Jon Walker,” he groans as Jon sucks a mark into his neck, “you’re a sneaky bastard.”

“You love me,” is Jon’s smug reply against his throat, and Brendon makes sure Jon looks him right in the eye before responding. 

“I really do.”

***

Brendon’s favorite day of the week, easily, is Sunday. Something about it feels bright, completely independent of the weather outside, feels like a clean slate, a fresh start. It’s not a religion thing, or maybe it is, way deep down, a leftover from a former life, but Brendon prefers to think of it as a calendar thing instead. He likes beginnings. The intro is always his favorite part of a song to write, the first chapter always his favorite to read. Learning the patterns and rhythms of things, knowing that no matter how things stand now, they could wind up anywhere, everything teeming with possibility.

Jon takes him to look at apartments every day of the week for a month. Nothing is right. Every one is too far from school, too expensive, too light, too dark, not cat friendly, too many trees, not enough trees, and the list goes on. Brendon isn’t normally one to accept defeat once a gauntlet has been thrown, but even he has his limits, and although getting high in Ryan and Spencer’s living room after a failed mission is comforting, it doesn’t solve the problem. He’s getting to the point where he’s just about ready to sign his name on any lease at all, if it means no more apartment hunting. 

Spencer says they need to just pick a place. (“It’s not like you’re buying a house. If you don’t like it, move.”) When Ryan insists they not settle, Spencer scoffs and reminds them that if he and Ryan relied on Ryan’s know-how they’d be eating every meal by candlelight (“It’d be _romantic_ , ass.”) and treating Lake Michigan as though it were the Ganges. Brendon spends a lot of these stoned hangouts gazing woefully around Spencer and Ryan’s apartment, mentally replacing Ryan’s guitar with Jon’s bass, Spencer’s computer with Brendon’s sewing machine, and wondering if it would be out of line to look into having his friends killed, you know, discreetly, and if it would be in bad taste to move in the very same day. 

Jon is adamant—the right place is out there, they just need to find it. Privately, Brendon is betting on having to pay another month in his current place and is preparing for the explosion of stuff once Jon’s lease is up. It’s discouraging to say the least. 

On the last Sunday in August, with just over a week until the new semester starts at school and days until Jon’s lease runs out, Jon ushers a mopey Brendon into the car, an old beat up Topaz with broken AC but a working tape deck, and they make the silent drive to Ryan and Spencer’s building. Brendon is surprised, but grateful. It’s before noon, so probably no getting high, but maybe he can coerce Spencer into making him waffles, pull out the sad eyes. Besides, if he never has to look at another place where “cozy” is code for “dump”, it’ll be too soon. They take the elevator up to Ryan and Spencer’s floor, but when they get to the door, Jon keeps going and knocks on a door two doors down and across the hall. 

“Are you lost?” Brendon smirks, and Jon just smiles and shakes his head no, entering easily when the door opens. 

Intrigued, Brendon follows, and what he’s greeted with inside is… well, it’s a Brendon Dream Home, is what it is. The woman who lives in the place chatters at Jon while Brendon gapes. The windows are tall and let in lots of light, but the trees in front of the building filter it enough that it’s not searingly hot even with the curtains open. There are nooks and crannies everywhere for stuff to be tucked in, and for cats to sleep in. Already Brendon can see all of their stuff scattered around. It’s similar to Spencer and Ryan’s in style, but different in all the ways Brendon never knew he wanted to be different. It’s perfect. 

“So what do you think?” Jon asks, elbowing Brendon in the ribs.

Brendon is flabbergasted. “How—How did you—“

“Oh, wait. You haven’t seen the best part.” Jon grabs Brendon by the elbow and steers him across the huge living room (with a post!) to show him a second bedroom. Here Brendon is confused. “It’s a music room,” Jon says, eyes crinkled at the corners from grinning so hard. “For you.”

Brendon’s heart feels like it’s about to balloon right out of his chest, and he does the only thing he can think of. He wraps a hand around the back of Jon’s neck and yanks him close for a kiss that is probably far too private for in front of a stranger, but when he pulls back, Jon’s eyes are delighted, if dazed. 

“So is that a yes?” he asks, sloppy over all the s’s.

“It’s a _fuck, yes_ ,” Brendon affirms.

They fill the paperwork out right there, and then go down the hall to their new neighbors’ for victory waffles, so much better than consolation waffles. Brendon cuts his up all at once, drenched in syrup, and then eats with his left hand so he can lace his fingers with Jon’s under the table. Afterward, they go to Brendon’s apartment to pack.

“Where did you even hear about that place?” Brendon asks, taping up another box and labeling it _Stuff III_ , looking up in time to catch Jon give him the finger as he reads the label. He scribbles it out and writes _Dishes_ , earning a nod from Jon.

“Last time we were visiting Ryan and Spencer. I saw a flyer,” Jon shrugs, wrapping up something in newspaper.

“That was two days ago.”

“Yep.”

“Why didn’t we go then?”

“I wanted to wait.”

“How come?”

Jon gives him a fond look. “What am I, new? It’s Sunday. Sunday’s your lucky day.”

***

All in all, Brendon is pretty amazingly pleased with his life. It’s a much better life than the one he’d thought he’d wind up with, when he struck out on his own at seventeen, faith abandoned, family estranged. 

He graduates with a musical theory degree on a blustery May morning, the wind whipping the tassel on his mortarboard around and around while Jon clicks photo after photo, Spencer and Ryan cheering wildly beside him. Two weeks later he gets a job teaching various instruments, mostly to kids, but he’s got a few adult students as well. Jon works in an art gallery three blocks from where Brendon works, doing framing and some custom work when it comes in, and every so often, he kidnaps Brendon on his lunch hour and they get Starbucks and wander around, making fun of whatever outrageous saying is on the side of their cups and assigning yay-or-nay opinions of it to the people they pass on the street. 

They get another cat, because Jon gives Brendon the face and Brendon’s a sucker for the way Jon coos whenever there’s a cat doing something cute in his vicinity. Jon wants to name her Thumper, but ever since Brendon read _House of Leaves_ at Ryan’s insistence (“the most fucked up thing you’ll ever read— plus, _footnotes_ ”), he can’t even watch _Bambi_ without thinking of a scary tattooed prostitute, so they settle on Clover instead. 

They hang out with Ryan and Spencer most nights, playing video games or watching movies. Sometimes, the guitars will get broken out and if there’s enough pot factored into the equation, Ryan will be able to wheedle Spencer into playing the tambourine, which Spencer purports to hate, but never misses a beat on, even when he’s a breathless, giggly lump against Brendon’s side, one hand always remaining relentlessly in time.

It’s not the life Brendon thought he’d have, or the family he had counted on, but it’s one he believes in, one he’s made for himself, and even though he doesn’t keep the faith anymore, sometimes he can’t help but sit up and look around at his life and wonder if it isn’t genuinely a miracle.

***

On a clear, bright Wednesday morning in November, Brendon wakes up to Spencer banging on the front door, yelling that the power went out last night, and for them to get the hell to work. Sure enough, when Brendon blearily opens one eye enough to glance at the clock, it’s a blinking red 12:00. He shakes Jon awake, resisting the urge to sink back into sleep, especially difficult when presented with a sleepy, snuggly Jon Walker, but can’t help the smile when Jon glares at him through slitted eyes.

“Work,” he reminds Jon, who _hmmphs_ into his pillow. Jon hates all mornings ever. “Come on,” he says, giving Jon another shake. “You coffee, me shower, then switch.”

“Coffee,” Jon mumbles in agreement, and Brendon knows he’ll get up and have his half of the pot drank by the time Brendon is dressed. 

“Ryan and Spencer want to know if we’ll watch Hobo while they’re on their Big Gay Getaway over Christmas break,” Jon calls from the kitchen after he’s well-caffeinated.

“Absolutely not.” Brendon’s words are garbled by toothpaste foam, but he doesn’t like to spit it out until the end. “I hate animals, and favors, and that goes double for Ryan and Spencer, who I loathe wholly.” Ha. He finishes brushing and spits in the sink, smirking to himself in the mirror. Victory. 

“Yeah, that’s what I said. We’ll stick them with the cats this summer, maybe. Go on a roadtrip. Wanna go clam digging in Oregon?”

“Yuck, and yuck.” Brendon makes sure to throw a towel in Jon’s face when he appears in the bathroom doorway. Brendon’s fear of clams is totally reasonable and rational, thank you. He needs his fingers intact and attached, and that goes for toes as well. 

“There’s no pleasing some people,” Jon sighs dramatically. 

They walk to the corner where Jon goes left and Brendon goes right and Brendon gives Jon an obnoxiously loud smacking kiss on the mouth. Jon bats his eyelashes and replies in his best falsetto, “Have a good day, dear,” before grinning for real and turning to head for the gallery. 

Brendon’s day is hectic and exhausting. He sees four kids before his lunch break, all of whom have sniffly, runny, little-kid noses, and the last one has to go home early after throwing up in a trash can. The afternoon drags on and on, and when Mrs. Vartebedian doesn’t show up for her five o’clock cello lesson, Brendon calls it a sign and leaves early. 

He’s home before Jon, and he makes dinner, vegetable stir-fry, but is too hungry to wait, so he eats alone. There’s the beginnings of a headache stirring, a dull throb behind both of his eyes, and he puts the leftovers away, leaves a note saying dinner is in the fridge, and takes three aspirin before collapsing into bed. 

When he wakes up, it’s dark outside, and both his and Jon’s clocks are still blinking 12:00, never reset from the morning. Brendon’s got two cats in bed with him, but no Jon, so he figures it’s eight, maybe nine o’clock, and drags himself out of bed to demand cuddles and maybe a neck rub where the headache seems to have migrated. 

The living room is empty, TV and lights all off, and there’s only one set of shoes by the door. Brendon grabs his phone off the kitchen table and falls onto the couch with a yawn, opening up his voicemail to see if Jon left a message saying when he’ll be home. Brendon wants that neck rub, like, right now. There’s no message, and Brendon thumbs in Jon’s number, ready to guilt Jon into coming home, but there’s no answer, just goes to voicemail. Brendon takes the phone away from his ear and studies it in tired, achy confusion for a minute before he notices the time and his whole body goes cold.

4:24 AM

“That can’t be right,” he mutters to himself. The microwave and stove clock all read 12:00, same as the clocks in the bedroom, and he stumbles over to his laptop, prying the screen open to read the time and the next thing he knows, he’s in the hallway, pounding furiously on Ryan and Spencer’s door. 

Spencer answers, rubbing grouchily at his face and still in his boxers. “Brendon, what? It’s four-thirty in the fucking morning. If this is your idea of payback for yesterday—“

“Jon never came home last night,” Brendon blurts out, talking over Spencer as the words fall out of him, torrential. “I fell asleep and I just woke up now, and I tried to call him, but he’s not answering his phone. Why wouldn’t he answer his phone?” he demands hysterically. 

“Hey, hey, woah. Calm down,” Spencer says, putting a hand on Brendon’s shoulder and looking very much awake. “Come inside. We’ll figure this out.”

“He’s missing,” Brendon says, and he can feel the color drain from his face as he says it out loud for the first time. He feels dizzy and sick. “Jon’s missing.”

***

Brendon sits at Ryan and Spencer’s kitchen table holding a lukewarm mug of tea. He doesn’t want it, but it’s good to have something to hold onto. It’s seven o’clock in the morning. They’ve already called Jon’s phone a half dozen times each, left messages each time until the inbox is full and they can’t even do that anymore. They call their other friends—Pete, Andy, Nick, they even call Tom on the road—but no one has seen or heard from him.

Spencer calls the hospitals and Brendon almost passes out with relief when there’s no one there who matches Jon’s description, until he realizes that he still doesn’t know where Jon is. He thinks he really must be getting sick when he catches Ryan mouthing the word _morgue_ at Spencer, which is _impossible_ , _fuck_ , this is _ridiculous_ , Jon is _fine_ , and Brendon is having some sort of hallucination, a fever-induced nightmare brought on by those little plague-carriers at work and too many episodes of _Criminal Minds_. 

At seven-thirty, they call the police. A detective (Brendon thinks? She’s got a badge, and that’s all Brendon is really able to retain) comes over and asks them questions, gets a photo of Jon, his work schedule. Ryan holds Brendon’s hand the whole time she’s there. She leaves two hours later, with instructions to call her if anything new comes to mind. The edges of her card are sharp against the pads of Brendon’s fingers. 

It’s a Thursday, and it’s the longest day of Brendon’s life.

***

Three days pass, and every time the phone rings, Brendon’s mouth floods with saliva and his palms turn slippery with sweat. This time is no different. Hope and dread curl together in his throat so tight he can’t tell them apart anymore.

“Hello?” His voice is rough, unused, and he has to force the word out.

Sometimes he imagines how the conversation would go if it were ever Jon on the other end of the line. Imaginary-Jon always has a different excuse—a surprise visit to Tom, a job interview, wanderlust—but imaginary-Brendon’s reaction is always the same: choking, blinding rage. He yells and screams and makes full use of his superior breath control because Jon deserves it ( _motherfucker, what the fuck is wrong with you?_ ) and it’s a good thing Jon is okay because Brendon is going to tear him a new asshole when he gets home. These daydreams always leave Brendon riled up, heart hammering blood past his eardrums, breathing shaky. 

They’re what Jon would call a level four meltdown.

“Is this Brendon Urie?” a girl’s voice asks, tinny over the line.

Brendon coughs and swallows, trying to work some excess moisture into his dry throat. “Speaking. Who is this?” 

“My name’s Katie. I work at the Info Desk in Hyde Park. We had a backpack with a wallet and some other things turned in a couple days ago, and no one’s claimed it. There was a card with your number on it inside. Do you know a Jonathan Walker?”

“I’ll be right there,” he says breathlessly, and hangs up before she can reply. 

“What is it? Was it him? Did they find him?” Ryan asks. “ _Brendon_.” 

“He was in Hyde Park a couple days ago,” Brendon says absently, rifling through stacks of paper trying to find a set of car keys. “Someone turned in his backpack. _Fuck_ , where are my fucking keys?”

“Fuck it. We’ll take Spencer’s car,” Ryan says, and they’re speeding down the road toward the park within a minute. Brendon is glad Ryan is the one doing the driving. Brendon gets turned around at the best of times and he’s currently running on three day’s worth of caffeine and an orange, despite the seven casseroles Spencer has made since Brendon woke him up in the middle of the night. 

Ryan and Spencer have been staying in Brendon’s apartment, sleeping in fitful shifts on rare occasions. One of them goes back to their apartment two or three times a day to feed Hobo and take her to the bathroom, but otherwise, they’re always there. 

Brendon remembers being eighteen and getting a letter of acceptance and a music scholarship from the University of Chicago, nowhere else, nothing in-state whatsoever. He remembers quietly freaking out for days and then Ryan showing up one scorching hot morning at Brendon’s rathole apartment that perpetually stank of bananas, telling him that, “Brendon, you idiot, no shit we’re going with you. I’ve wanted to get the fuck out of Vegas since I knew there _was_ an out of Vegas, and Spencer, fuck. He’s doing accounting. Math is math everywhere. Even in Chicago.” 

They’re always there. 

“Thanks,” Brendon says quietly, without really meaning to. There’s a waver in his voice. His eyes sting and he blinks furiously, looking away when Ryan snaps his eyes off the road to look at Brendon, and Brendon feels like a fucking idiot crybaby for getting all weepy now. 

“We’ll find him, Bren.” Ryan doesn’t take his hands off the wheel, but his normal monotone is steely with determination and his dark eyes bore into Brendon’s. “We will.” 

Brendon swallows and nods and believes him, because it’s Ryan.

They pull into the park and there’s a line at the Info Desk, but Brendon cuts ahead of everyone, ignoring the annoyed noises behind him and asking for Katie. She hands over the backpack. It’s Jon’s. Inside is his phone, his camera, wallet, and some other odds and ends. Inside the wallet is a white business card. It’s handwritten and reads _In Case of Emergency 1. Brendon Urie 412-542-8823 2. Spencer Smith 412-206-7147 3. Ryan Ross 412-373-6240_

“Who brought this here?” he asks, but Katie has no idea. 

“We get thousands of people here every day,” she explains.

“Have you seen this guy?” Brendon shows her a photo. It’s a terrible picture. Jon’s hair is too short and it makes his forehead look huge. The lighting is weird and fluorescent and it doesn’t translate well into the photo, and it’s grainy because it was taken with a shitty disposable. Jon’s smiling like a doofus in it because that’s what he’s like. Smiley. 

Katie, to her credit, gives it a good hard look before looking apologetic, shaking her head and saying sorry. She tries to give it back, but Brendon holds his hands up, suddenly exhausted.

“Keep it. Please. In case he comes back.” He writes his name and number on the back of the photo and lets Ryan steer him back toward the car with a hand on the small of his back.

Back at the apartment, Brendon drags himself into bed, letting Ryan fill Spencer in. Spencer was out putting up flyers, as it turns out, and through the wall, Brendon hears him say that tomorrow they’ll go put up more at the park. There’s a pause where Brendon hears them muttering to each other, and then Ryan is on the phone, asking for the detective woman from before. Brendon can’t even remember her name. He tucks his knees up to his chest and fiddles with the contents of Jon’s wallet in the low afternoon light, the card with Brendon’s name on it, Jon’s letters small and neat and close together, pen strokes through the stems of his sevens.

Brendon takes back every angry, hateful thought he’s had toward Jon, rewinds the tape on every rehearsed confrontation, and closes his eyes. When he opens them again, this will all be over. Jon will be asleep in bed and Brendon will fucking fall all over himself to make him happy, the end. 

He opens his eyes, and is still alone, and whatever day it is today, it’s not Brendon’s lucky one.

***

Mornings are the worst.

There’s never a re-remembering, never a glorious sleepy moment where he forgets and just thinks that Jon is in the bathroom or already making coffee. He just wakes up, all at once like always, and Jon is still gone. Like always.

***

Brendon goes back to work two weeks before Christmas. He doesn’t particularly miss it, but he needs something to do other than just sit around. Everyone at work apologizes profusely and Brendon thanks them, but really, he doesn’t care. Unless they can tell him where Jon is, he’s uninterested in their opinions on the matter.

His students are almost all adults his first day back, and none of them complain about the pieces Brendon picks for them to play—slow, subdued, and melancholy. He stays away from Christmas carols of any kind. He corrects their fingering and gives quiet feedback when they finish. They all thank him without looking him in the eye. 

His last student of the day is Reid. He’s seven and learning to play the piano. He plays _Row, Row, Row Your Boat_ perfectly for the first time ever, and it’s all he wants to do for the rest of the lesson, so Brendon sits beside him and they play it in a round, Brendon in the lower key. Reid sings the words as loud as he can and demands that Brendon sing too (“It’s a _round_ ,” he says, and Brendon has to admit it’s a pretty good argument; it is a round) and they play and sing for the last ten minutes straight. When Reid’s mom comes to pick him up, he throws his little kid arms around Brendon’s neck and squeezes tight and wishes him a Merry Christmas. 

Brendon goes home and has potato soup for dinner. He brushes Dylan and Clover and changes their cat box and even throws Dylan’s ball for a while. He feels—well, not good, but lighter at least. It’s nice to play and to sing again. He hasn’t wanted to do either since… since. He thinks he might be on the right track here, going back to work, doing things again, interacting.

The next day, the police declare Jon officially presumed dead.

***

Brendon calls Jon’s phone every day at eight forty-five in the morning. It’s the longest part of the day, all his little morning routines finished, still hours and hours looming ahead until he can go back to sleep. He calls, just once, and listens with his hand covering his mouth and his eyes closed.

_Hey, it’s Jon. Leave a message._

He only calls once per day, because if he allows himself more than that, he knows he’d never stop calling.

***

Most nights, Brendon’s dreams are totally random. Sometimes he’s himself as himself, sometimes he’s himself as a different character, sometimes he’s watching things happen like it’s an old film reel, choppy and disjointed. They feature people he knows from real life, real people he’s never met, and people he’s made up entirely. He usually forgets about them right after waking up unless he makes a concentrated effort to remember, and even then, the memory only stays for a little while. Jon only features in the dreams sporadically, but Brendon can always tell when it’s happened because he wakes up crying, and every second Jon is further away than he was the one before.

***

Ryan and Spencer cancel their trip to New York to spend Christmas with Brendon. He tries to talk them out of it, but when he says he’s fine, Ryan snaps like a dry twig.

“Fuck, Brendon, you are so fucking far from fine, you probably think that’s true.”

“Go to hell, Ryan,” Brendon says listlessly. “I don’t need your seal of approval. You’re not my goddamn chaperone.”

“No, we’re your friends, and what you need is to quit acting like a fucking dickhole and let us help you. You’re not the only one upset here, Brendon, _fuck_ —“

“Alright, time out,” cuts in Spencer, hands already on Ryan’s shoulders and steering him toward the hallway. “Ryan, go take Hobo outside.”

“But—“

“ _Go_.” Spencer gives Ryan a little push outside and shuts Brendon’s door in his astonished face. 

“I’ll apologize,” Brendon says dully when Spencer sits down at the table beside him. 

“I don’t care about that,” says Spencer. “What are you doing for Christmas?”

“What?”

“What are you doing for Christmas? You don’t have anything set up. Are you going somewhere?”

Brendon shakes his head. 

“What about Jon’s parents’? I know they invited you.”

“No, I just—“ Brendon doesn’t want to think about this. He doesn’t want to think about Jon’s mom trying not to cry on the phone, telling him that he’s always welcome, of course he’s welcome, he’s family, that’s what Christmas is for, because all it makes him think of is how he used to have a family, used to be a part of one, and now he isn’t anymore, because how can he have a family without Jon in it? His eyes are stinging and he swipes his fingers under his glasses, but the stinging stays. “I can’t. Christmas, it’s—it’s too much.” 

Last Christmas, he and Jon bought a Christmas tree (“A real one!” Jon had demanded. “Fake tree, fake Christmas!”) from the grocery store for twenty bucks and carried it home, one of them at each end, because the car needed a new battery. They decorated it listening to the soundtrack from _About A Boy_ , and afterwards they watched _Love, Actually_ because Jon has an old guy crush on Hugh Grant. Jon wore a different horrible sweater every day of December, and at night, they’d lie on their backs underneath the branches with only the tree lights on and smoke a joint, swapping Christmas traditions and kisses back and forth. 

Spencer’s hand closes around Brendon’s. “Spend Christmas with me and Ryan,” he says, and when Brendon blinks away the blurriness clouding his vision, there’s so much sincerity in Spencer’s face that he can’t help but say yes.

***

Spencer’s version of spending Christmas with someone includes the days leading up to Christmas as well as the actual day, and Brendon finds himself at their place more often than not. The decorations are sparse, but have Ryan written all over them. A few tabletop trees, glass balls color co-ordinated to whatever other furniture is around them and little origami bows tucked into the branches, white lights in the doorways. It’s not overwhelming and whether that’s on purpose or simply because it’s a last minute holiday, Brendon doesn’t know. He doesn’t ask.

Spencer cooks up a storm every night and bakes all day. Brendon helps him by doing the dishes. His hands stay warm and it gives him something to focus on. Ryan periodically wanders into the kitchen to try to steal fresh cookies, but Spencer chases him out, wooden spoon and all. He offers them to Brendon, payment for his labor, but Brendon always declines, saying he’ll wait until dinner. 

Brendon watches how they are with each other, tries to pay enough attention to follow the conversation and to smile at the right moments. It’s harder than he remembers, but so is everything else, like he’s slogging his way through chest deep water with nothing but more water in sight. He gets distracted easily and loses blocks of time to nothing at all.

Two days before Christmas, the three of them sit down to dinner and Brendon is startled back to awareness by the scraping of a chair across the floor. His eyes feel gritty, and he wonders how long it’s been since he’s blinked. There’s a clattering noise in front of him, and he looks down at the table, forcing his eyes to focus. It seems like it takes a long time. 

“Eat this,” Spencer says. It’s a bowl of macaroni and cheese. 

Brendon looks at him and tries to look grateful, but apologetic. “No thanks,” he says. 

“It’s your favorite.”

Brendon shrugs. “I’m not really hungry.”

“Brendon.” Spencer folds his fingers over both of Brendon’s hands. “I can’t say it any plainer than this. If you do not eat this food, you and me and Ryan are going to get our coats, and get in the car, and we’ll be spending Christmas in the hospital.” His voice is calm, but firm. “You’re hurting yourself,” he says quietly. 

Brendon looks down the table to where Ryan is sitting, wide-eyed and silent. Ryan nods. He looks afraid. So does Spencer. They look like Brendon is hurting _them_. 

Brendon picks up a fork with wooden fingers and spears a bite of macaroni. It’s like ash in his mouth, sticking in his throat when he tries to swallow. His jaw gets tired pretty quickly from chewing and even though it’s a small bowl, it takes him almost forty minutes to finish. When he does, all he wants to do is sleep, and he stays in Ryan and Spencer’s bed, in the middle.

When he wakes up the next morning, they’re both curled up against him, hands clasped tight over his stomach, like they’ll do anything to keep him.

***

Christmas sucks.

***

On the last Monday of the year, Tom shows up. He doesn’t call ahead, just buzzes when he gets to the building, and at first, Brendon can’t figure out what the noise is it’s been so long since he’s had a visitor.

“Brendon,” is all Tom says when Brendon opens the door. His eyes widen slightly as he looks Brendon up and down.

“Hey,” Brendon says softly. He kind of can’t believe Tom’s here, and when Tom hugs him, it takes him a second to remember to hug back.

Tom brings two six-packs and they crack a couple open and sit in the living room. Brendon asks about Tom’s band and touring, and Tom tells him stories about life on the road, crazy fans, and weird little towns. He doesn’t ask how Brendon is doing. They get a pizza because Tom has been “traipsing all over the fucking country, man, and let me tell you, the rest of America should be ashamed of itself for what it tries to pass off as Chicago deep-dish”. In a completely transparent move, Tom orders a Veggie Lover’s even after Brendon says he doesn’t want any, saying only “What? I like vegetables,” in response to Brendon’s skeptically raised eyebrows. 

The pizza arrives and Brendon even eats a piece, sans crust. When they’re done, Tom grabs them each another beer from the fridge and fiddles with the tab on his for a while before clearing his throat. 

“I, uh, brought you a present,” he says, and pulls a book out of the liquor store bag. “He left it at my house the last time he was there.”

Brendon puts his beer down on the side table before he can drop it, and opens the front cover. It’s a kind of lazy man’s scrapbook, photos tucked in between the pages, in singles, in clumps, some taped in, most loose, with little drawings and notations on the pages. There are pictures of Brendon, of Ryan and Spencer, of random bits of trash around the neighborhood, and a ridiculous amount of pictures of cats sleeping in various positions. They’re Jon’s pictures, full of artistic bastardry, and there’s so much of him in every one of them that for a moment, Brendon forgets how to breathe.

“He fucking loves you, you know,” Tom says thickly. He uses the present tense and in that moment, Brendon knows that Tom will never, ever give up on finding Jon.

“He loves you, too,” he says, because it’s true, and because Brendon won’t ever give up, either.

Tom nods, and wipes at his eyes, and laughs a little. “Fuck,” he says, taking a swig of his beer. “If Jonny were here right now he’d be laughing his ass off at us, boo-hooing like a couple of little old ladies.” He stands up. “Come on, Bden,” he says, holding out a hand to haul Brendon up. “Let’s go play us some songs.”

They bring the rest of the beers with them and sit cross-legged on the floor of the music room. Brendon hasn’t been in there since Jon disappeared, and maybe it’s the alcohol, maybe it’s Tom, but he feels a little silly about it now. It’s just a room, and it doesn’t feel bad to be in there, or to have a guitar’s comforting weight in his lap. He and Tom play until all the beers are gone and even though they don’t hurt now, Brendon can tell his fingertips are rubbed raw. It’s a nice feeling.

Tom spends the night on the couch because it’s late and he’s already sleepy-drunk. Brendon putters around, finding a spare pillow and blanket for him to use, and when he brings them over, Tom accepts them, but just stares at Brendon. 

“What?” Brendon asks. He’s swaying on his feet, but from the music, not the alcohol.

“S’Jonny’s,” Tom finally answers, and Brendon looks down at the sweater he’s wearing in surprise. It is indeed Jon’s, a Chicago Cubs sweat shirt that Brendon had pulled on that morning rather than get dressed for real. He’d forgotten he was wearing it. 

“Yeah,” he says, and maybe he’s drunker than he thought, because without even thinking, what comes out of his mouth next is, “D’you want one?”

Tom’s expression is one of total shock, and for a long moment, Brendon thinks he’s made some kind of horrible faux pas, but then Tom’s mouth closes in a thin line, his eyes go shiny-wet, and he nods, quick and jerky, like he’s afraid Brendon will take it back if he waits too long. 

Brendon brings him a Christmas sweater, predictably awful, but comfortable and warm. It smells like Jon. Tom takes it carefully in both hands and gives it a watery smile before pulling it over his head and hugging his arms around himself. 

“Can I tell you a secret?” Tom asks in a whisper. 

It’s Brendon’s turn to nod, and he sits down on the couch.

“I see him everywhere I go,” he says. “In every city. It’s always from the back, but I can tell it’s him. And then he turns around, and it’s not him anymore. It’s just a random person, and I just want to punch them in the face for not being him, you know?”

Brendon does know. He spends most of his journeys looking down at the sidewalk from point A to point B because of it. 

Tom’s hands ball into loose fists in the cuffs of the sweater. “Is that crazy?”

“Maybe,” Brendon admits, and they both share a chuckle.

“Yeah,” Tom agrees, and sighs. “Thanks for hanging out with me today.”

Brendon blinks, surprised, but nods, and they say goodnight. It’s strange to have a guest, especially Tom, who is so much like Jon, and yet not Jon at all. He lays awake a long time, and when he finally falls asleep, he doesn’t dream of anything.

***

Things start to get a little better after the new year. It’s almost like it’s against his will, but it’s January, and Brendon can’t ignore the fact that it’s a beginning. He guesses it must be hardwired into him.

He gives himself a haircut and a shave after realizing that the homeless person in his bathroom is really his own reflection. And then goes grocery shopping because that homeless person looks like a ghoul, cheeks sunken and skin so ashy it looks grey. He starts eating regularly again and finds that he’s got all kinds of energy for things, even if he’s got no inclination to do them yet. He goes to work— he needs the money even if he didn’t need the distraction, which he does— and does his best to concentrate fully on what he’s doing there, uses it as a springboard for filling up his endless succession of days, each one by and large indistinguishable from the one before or after it. He buys Dylan and Clover some wet cat food and some new toys and makes them promise not to tell Jon that he forgot to get them Christmas presents. 

He’s not quite ready to haul himself out of his depression well, but he thinks he might be ready to fake it.

***

Brendon loves Dylan and always has, but there’s no denying that he is Jon’s cat, his baby boy. Sure, he’ll bring his ball to Brendon when he wants to play and wind around Brendon’s feet when he wants to be a pest, but when Dylan is into some seriously hardcore cuddling, it’s no secret that it’s Jon’s lap he’s looking for.

Brendon is kneeling on the living room floor, folding laundry, and doing what he thinks could reasonably be called okay, when Dylan jumps up into the basket of clean, folded clothes, eye-level with Brendon, and lets out the loudest, saddest meow Brendon has ever heard.

“Maaaow,” says Dylan, and blinks his huge eyes at Brendon as though to say _fix this now_. “Maaaow.” 

Brendon scoops Dylan into his lap and hugs him to his chest, brushing his nose against the soft fur on top of Dylan’s head, and cries.

***

Ryan and Spencer actually fight all the time. Brendon figures it’s probably a little inevitable, once you’ve known someone for long enough. You know how to push all their buttons. They fight about the most ridiculous things like whether the can opener gets put away in the right drawer or not, or if the expression “could care less” makes more or less grammatical sense than “couldn’t care less”. Sometimes they’re real fights and sometimes they’re just needling, but they’re almost always, always quiet. Brendon figures their freaky mind telepathy is another thing that’s probably inevitable, especially given their shared childhood.

Today, though, they’ve been screaming at each other for fifteen minutes already and Brendon can hear them two doors down. He doesn’t know what it’s about and he doesn’t care, but if he doesn’t get away from their bitching at each other right this fucking second, he’s going to stroke out. 

He shoves his feet into a pair of boots and throws on his coat, grabbing his hat and mitts and scarf because they’re going through a cold snap and the last thing he needs is frostbite on top of everything else. He opens the door and the yelling is noticeably louder out in the hallway, and Brendon doesn’t even think twice before he slams his door as hard as he can, the echo ringing up and down the length of the hall. The shouting stops and Brendon storms past their door and outside, cursing viciously, righteous anger burning through him like acid. 

He burns out relatively quickly, and by the time he gets to the park by the river, he’s already drained, can feel the sadness seeping back in, swirling heavy in his chest. It’s too cold for there to be many people around, and he trudges through the knee-high snow to a half-buried picnic bench a hundred yards or so off the beaten path. 

Brendon likes Chicago for a lot of reasons, but a big one is winter. He likes how it makes everything feel quiet, and at the same time, means that he can sit here on this bench with his back to everyone and not get snuck up on by anyone without hearing them crunching through the snow. His scarf hides enough of his face that he doesn’t bother trying to wait, and his cheeks are wet before he even sits down. 

He watches cars across the river and cries and thinks what a fucking waste it is to have someone and spend all your time yelling at each other. 

It’s pathetic and unproductive and he doesn’t care. 

It’s getting dark already when he finally cries himself out, the snow drifts turning a pale blue in the twilight. He walks home with his hands in his pockets, fingers numb with cold despite the mitts, and when he gets there, there’s a wrapped plate of brownies next to his door, _sorry_ written in Ryan’s slanted cursive and tacked through the plastic wrap with a toothpick. 

It’s a Saturday, and if anyone has earned a night of eating chocolate and getting high, it’s Brendon.

***

Brendon spends the entire month of February on edge, and it’s not because of all of the Valentine’s paraphernalia or the obvious couples in the street or even because it’s the month he met Jon. It’s because when he was fifteen, he learned about specific densities and how the temperature change in a large body of water will cause a body to float to the surface, and that February, it warms up enough for the ice to melt off the lake.

***

Brendon’s favorite ever picture of Jon is one he keeps hidden in his sock drawer. It’s not a dirty picture or even a naked one. It’s just a regular picture, nothing fancy, taken by Brendon himself, but he likes to keep it secret, keep it safe. In it, Jon is wearing a striped shirt and a dopey, sleepy, bashful half-smile. He’s got his head tilted to the side and one hand running through his hair and it’s just such a Jon look that Brendon almost, incredibly, feels not alone when he looks at it.

***

In March, Brendon catches a bug of some kind and is laid out for an entire weekend. He runs a fever of 102 and switches back and forth between boiling in his own skin and freezing his ass off.

During a cold swing, he decides he feels bad enough to brave a hot shower, and is congratulating himself on a plan well executed when the lights go out. He manages to turn the water off and get out of the tub without falling, but only just, and he’s only able to partially dry off before the chills set in again and he’s forced to pull on some pajamas, wet fabric clinging uncomfortably to his skin.

He wants some hot tea. Scalding, preferably, but when he puts the bag in the mug and presses the microwave buttons nothing happens. He flicks a few light switches and they all stay unlit. A whimper makes its way out of his throat and he shuffles to the fuse box, doesn’t see any that are facing the wrong way, and flips them all back and forth anyway. It’s exhausting work and it yields no results, so he abandons ship. 

He stands outside Ryan and Spencer’s door and knocks, water still dripping from the ends of his hair. He leans heavily against the door, eyelids drifting shut, and when the door opens, Brendon falls forward right into whoever is on the other side. 

“Little help?” Ryan calls, staggering under Brendon’s weight. Ryan must grow an extra pair of arms because a moment later, Brendon’s balance is restored, although he is still, tragically, standing. 

“Jesus, you look terrible,” Ryan reports, ever the charmer, and somehow he gets Brendon to the couch, where Brendon blessedly keels over. “Why aren’t you asleep?” Ryan’s extra arms stick a pillow behind Brendon’s head and soon there’s a blanket, too. 

“My apartment is broken,” Brendon moans pitifully as he burrows into the blanket. It’s sad. It’s a nice apartment.

“What do you mean it’s broken?”

“I can’t make tea.”

“Why not?”

“The lights won’t turn on.”

“It’s probably a blown fuse,” says another voice, and now Brendon remembers, Ryan’s extra arms are named Spencer. “I’ll take a look at it.”

“What do you know about fuses?” Ryan asks skeptically.

“That I must have a long one to deal with you,” Spencer’s voice retorts.

“Ooh, Spencer, tell me more about your _long fuse_ ,” Ryan teases. 

“I hope Brendon gives you his plague.”

The Spencer voice goes away and Ryan turns his attention back to Brendon. “Want me to make you some tea?” he asks gently, and Brendon feels a cool hand on his burning forehead. He nods, but falls asleep before Ryan comes back. 

When he opens his eyes again, Spencer is back and ready for him.

“Hot or cold?” he asks, holding up a mug and a glass. 

“Cold,” Brendon rasps. Spencer hands him two sour tasting pills to take and the ice water feels good on Brendon’s parched throat.

“How you feeling?” Spencer asks, taking the glass away when Brendon is done.

“Tired still,” Brendon says in a small voice, already feeling the lure of sleep tug him under. He’s got a motherfucker of a headache. “Hurts. Is my apartment still broken?”

“Nope. All taken care of.”

“Thanks. You tell that Ryan Rossy that he underestimates your value.”

Spencer laughs, loud and bright. “I will,” he promises.

“Is it—Is it okay if I stay here anyway?”

“Absolutely.” Spencer’s still smiling and he brushes Brendon’s sweaty, sticky hair off of his forehead. “Go to sleep, Bren.”

Brendon lets his eyes fall closed and is asleep instantly.

***

One day, Brendon makes his usual eight forty-five call to Jon’s phone and a deep, cheerful, masculine voice answers.

“Yellow. Yellow?”

Brendon jerks the phone away from his ear and snaps it shut, staring at it in horror. He opens it again and scrolls frantically through his recent calls, but the last number dialed reads _Jon_. He almost calls again, but the thought of getting a stranger’s voice, a _stranger’s_ , when it should be _Jon’s_ , is too awful to bear. A thought occurs to him and it settles like lead in his stomach.

“Oh no,” he whispers. “Oh no, no, no.”

Jon still gets mail sent, of course he does, why wouldn’t he, and Brendon keeps it all in a shoebox he stole from Spencer. Brendon keeps it, but he doesn’t _open_ it. That’s for Jon to do when he comes back. Plus, it’s rude to open someone else’s mail. 

Brendon finds the box and upends it all over the floor, letters spilling out everywhere in a snowstorm of correspondence, and sure enough, in the pile are one, two, three envelopes from the phone company. He tears them open, manners be damned, and just like he expected, they’re overdue payment notices. 

No money, no service.

There’s a rushing in his ears. His chest feels tight, constricted. He stands up too fast, wrenching open a junk drawer and tearing through it until he finds what he’s looking for. He takes the stairs, as fast as he can, and bursts out the front door in his bare feet, stumbling and tripping over the uneven ground on his way to the car. 

Something alive is fighting its way up from his gut, scratching and clawing to get out. 

He shoves the key into the lock with shaking hands, throwing himself into the driver’s seat and screams as loud and as long as he can, and when he runs out of breath, he takes another and starts over. His arms and legs jerk wildly, uncontrollable. He’s coming apart. He screams and screams, and when his voice just won’t allow for it anymore, he gives up and bawls silently into his hands. 

He’s just lost Jon all over again, and for the first time since all of this started, Brendon honestly wishes with all his heart that he were dead.

***

Brendon begins to consider the possibility that Jon is dead on his birthday.

Spencer makes him a cake in the shape of a unicorn and Ryan decorates it with all the candy in the land. There’s a sparkler stuck in the horn and when it goes out, Brendon makes a wish and blows out the single candle right in the unicorn’s flank. 

Ryan takes a lighter out of his pocket and lights it again. “Make another,” he says at Brendon’s puzzled expression. “You deserve two.”

Brendon makes the same wish and blows. There’s only one thing he wants.

It’s Easter. The last time his birthday fell on Easter, he turned eleven years old. The entire Urie clan was crammed into their modest Vegas house, people eventually spilling out into the yard, unable to be contained. It was a big deal, and every time he turned around, there was another relative spinning him around and telling him that “today, kiddo, today of all days is the day to believe in miracles”. 

Jon doesn’t really know much of anything about Easter—until he met Brendon he thought it was a novelty holiday (“you know, like St. Patrick’s Day, but with a rabbit instead of the Lucky Charms leprechaun”)—but he does know that April 12th is Brendon’s birthday, and as the day wears on and Jon still doesn’t show, Brendon begins to realize that there’s no miracle on its way.

It’s a Sunday—the beginning of a new week—and it’s springtime—the beginning of a new season—and it’s his birthday—the beginning of a new year—but all Brendon can think is that he’s got a lifetime without Jon stretching out in front of him. 

And this is only the beginning.

***

Brendon decides to do his spring cleaning at the end of May. He needs a project and he figures, better late than never. He kind of goes overboard, and it takes four or five days to really finish. He cleans the blades of the ceiling fans, washes the walls, and scrubs every crevice around the baseboards with an old toothbrush. The cleaning extends to the cats, and he brushes enough excess winter hair out of both of them to make two whole other cats. Clover is happier than a pig in shit, purring like a freight train; Dylan, less so. Channeling his inner Spencer, he re-organizes all the kitchen stuff and cleans the oven. He carts all the rugs downstairs to drape over a railing outside, beating the dust out of them with a broom handle. It’s strangely cathartic.

He doesn’t wear his cleaning outfit, which consists of a pair of bleach-stained plaid pajama pants, an old grey T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, and a red bandana. He remembers mopping the kitchen floor when they first moved in, Cass Elliot belting it out while he worked, and Brendon was only human, okay, and it would take a better man than him to deny that the lady had some serious chops, and he sang while he worked, upending the mop when he finished, dancing around to the beat of the music. He remembers whirling around to see Jon hiding behind his camera, laughing his ass off while he snapped picture after picture of Brendon in what he had referred to as Brendon’s trailer park maid costume, warning “Don’t even,”, smiling so big his eyeteeth showed, hand held out in front of him as Brendon danced toward him, dripping sponge in hand. But Brendon did even, and when the dust settled, both of them were soaking wet and breathless with laughter, Mama Cass’s voice ringing off the bare walls of their still-packed-up home. 

_Getting better every day, bahm-bahm-bahm, better every day._

Brendon wouldn’t say things are getting better every day, but when he wipes the dust off the framed photos on the bookshelf and thinks about maybe putting them away, just for a little while, just so he can catch his breath for a bit, he feels almost okay about it, and then guilty as fuck. He dusts them off and leaves them exactly where they are, but he keeps the idea in the back of his mind and thinks that he might try again in a couple days.

***

He’s making lunch on a Wednesday and drops a fork in the crack between the refrigerator and the counter and when he retrieves it, he also finds an old electric bill among the dust. With a sinking feeling, he realizes he can’t remember when the last time he paid an electric bill was, but he also can’t remember the last time he received one.

“Fuck,” he mutters, and calls the utility company, already dreading the likely hundreds of dollars he owes for who knows how long worth of electricity. But when he inquires as to the status of his account, the woman on the phone tells him he’s all paid up.

“Who’s been paying it?” he asks, totally at a loss.

“The name we have on file is a Spencer Smith.”

Brendon thanks her and hangs up and pounds on Ryan and Spencer’s door.

“Spencer’s been paying my electric bill,” he accuses when Ryan opens the door, holding a half a sandwich in one hand.

Ryan freezes mid-chew, tensing like he’s prepping for a denial, and then his shoulders drop as he gives up the ruse. “Yeah,” he confirms, swallowing, and turns back into the apartment, Brendon on his heels. 

“You knew? What the fuck, Ryan?”

“It’s no big deal.”

“No big deal? Fuck, Ryan, you’re still in _school_.”

“ _Grad_ school,” Ryan corrects, sounding a little offended. “I have funding.”

“Not the point.”

“Look, Brendon, Spencer’s an accountant. He makes more money than you and I both put together. We’re fine. I swear.”

“You’re _fine_?” Brendon couldn’t inject more disbelief into his voice if he had a hypodermic.

“Yeah, fuck, we’re fine. We had some extra cash lying around and we’re happy to do it.”

“ _Lying around?_ ” 

“Stop repeating everything I say,” Ryan snaps.

“You just happened to have an extra thousand doll—“ Ryan looks everywhere but at Brendon and Brendon stops mid-sentence as the anvil falls. “ _Ryan._ ”

“What.” Ryan knows what, the surly fucker. 

Ryan has had very definite opinions of things the entire time Brendon has known him. He thinks writing in anything but black fountain pen is “pedestrian” and that Criss Angel is a “charlatan”—a “dicksmack” if he’s drinking. He insists that his scarves add “mystique” to his person and that all the eye makeup before that was “anti-heteronormative”. He also believes that everyone should, once in their lifetime, visit New York City and wander around, getting a feel for the life that runs through it. He says it’s part of the human experience. It’s his Mecca, and he was supposed to go at Christmas time, but he stayed home to be with Brendon instead. 

“That… That was for your trip. You and Spencer. It’s _yours_.” 

“Well, if it’s ours, I guess we can do whatever the fuck we want with it, can’t we?” 

Brendon’s mouth goldfishes, and Ryan sighs. “Look. New York’ll always be there,” he says in a more reasonable tone. “We wanted to spend Christmas with you.”

“You could go now,” Brendon says in a small voice, even though there’s no way he can afford to pay them back at the moment. His income barely stretches far enough to cover rent and groceries as it is. 

“Brendon, you dumbfuck,” Ryan says fondly, and only Ryan could make an insult like that sound like an endearment. “What makes you think there’s anywhere we’d rather be than here?”

***

The thing about Spencer is that when he gets an idea into his head, he’s like a dog with a bone, and in June, he starts dropping the world’s most unsubtle hints about this guy he knows from work. The guy—Shane—is, according to Spencer, a total weirdo, and really interesting and a demon at Halo. He mentions casually over chocolate chip pancakes one weekend that this Shane character can probably pick up a new video game faster than anyone Spencer’s ever seen in his life. Brendon scoffs reflexively, because he may be down and he’s certainly out of practice, but Brendon is a fucking Jedi master of video games and it’ll take a lot more than a pocket-protector-wearing accountant to dethrone him. Spencer jumps on his reaction, saying that Brendon should put his money where his mouth is, and before Brendon knows it, he’s let Spencer rope him into a Halo Night.

It’s easy to see why Spencer likes Shane when he shows up at Ryan and Spencer’s in shoes so red that they’re likely visible from space. He doesn’t have a pocket-protector, but he’s got goofy hair and a Journey T-shirt and an easy way about him that lends well to video game smack talk. Spencer greets him with a blinding smile and announces that Halo Night has been rechristened Halo Night Deathmatch: Artists vs Accountants. 

Brendon and Ryan are partners in this little arrangement, and Ryan is just hopeless, has zero hand-eye co-ordination on screen. Shane does actually turn out to be pretty good, and Spencer’s game is nothing to sneeze at, but in the end, Brendon carries out a perfect front-and-follow, gunning them both down to win the game. He kills Ryan too, for good measure. 

“But we’re partners!” Ryan cries and Brendon snorts. 

“Please, dude, it was a mercy kill.” 

“You do kind of suck, bro,” admits Shane, and Spencer just laughs and pets Ryan’s hair consolingly. 

Brendon’s got no problem with Shane. He even likes him and, after hanging out with him for an evening, has to concede that Spencer’s right in his assessment of him (except the part where he’s better than Brendon at video games). He puts up with Spencer pestering him about how hilarious Shane is every ten minutes for one whole week and then agrees to ask him out for dinner, mostly so Spencer will shut up about it. 

He almost cancels five times in two days leading up to the dinner, which is _not_ a date, and fuck Spencer anyway, the big girl’s blouse. He changes his clothes a dozen times before texting Ryan to come the hell over and help. Brendon vetoes everything with flowers on it and Ryan picks out something simple, tight jeans and a printed green button up that he brings over from his own closet. 

“You know, you don’t have to do this,” he says, looping a black tie around Brendon’s neck and tying a square knot.

“It’s not a big deal,” Brendon says. “It’s nothing. Just dinner.” His hands are clammy despite the summer heat and he keeps wiping them on the thighs of his pants. There’s an uncomfortable lump in his throat. “Too tight,” he complains, picking at the knot, and Ryan furrows his brow and loosens it slightly. 

Brendon walks to the restaurant where he and Shane agreed to meet and doesn’t freak out at all on the way there. It’s just dinner, and he and Shane are just hanging out, and he’s hungry, that’s all, a man’s gotta eat and whatnot. 

He steps into the restaurant and gives his name to the seating person, who smiles warmly and directs him to a table in the back. The restaurant is dim and quiet and Italian, and as he makes his way through it, a pit of unease starts to form in his stomach. The pit widens to a chasm when he spots Shane, dressed in jeans and a dark blazer over a cream colored button up. He doesn’t look like a guy who does taxes for a living. He looks, well… hot. Smoking hot, actually. He’s wearing the same insanely red shoes as before, but it doesn’t matter because he notices Brendon then and grins, and fuck, the look on his face and the clothes and the restaurant, and holy Jesus fuck, this is a date. 

Brendon is on a date. 

Shane waves him over and Brendon goes, mostly on autopilot, and he’s just thankful that he doesn’t make a total fucking idiot out of himself. They exchange basic pleasantries and Shane hands Brendon a menu, which he pretends to look through and tries to calm down. Eventually, he gets himself under control enough to fake being normal, and it’s not too shabby a performance, if he does say so himself. They order, and Shane asks him questions and Brendon responds and then asks a question of his own. It’s a pretty basic formula, and it’s working for Brendon enough that he starts to let his guard down, starts to relax, and there’s no reason that this has to be a wholly awful experience. They’ll eat, they’ll talk, and then they’ll go their separate ways. That’s all a date is anyway, right? Just hanging out. It’ll be fine. Just fine. 

Their food comes and it’s drowning in sauce the way Brendon likes it. Shane asks Brendon what instrument he would take with him if he was stranded on a desert island and approves of his choice when he says he’d take a guitar, but only if there were unlimited extra strings, and only because the all the sand would fuck up the sounding board in a piano. 

“So other than schooling Spencer at Halo what do you like to do?” Brendon asks when it’s his turn. “You know, for fun.”

Shane shrugs. “Regular stuff, I guess. My dog thinks she’s a person, and she’s pretty fun. Oh, but I’m taking a photography workshop thing at the university in the evenings. I think I have a few on this phone. Hang on a sec.” He fishes his phone out of his blazer pocket, leaning in close to Brendon so they can both see the screen, and an alarm starts to sound in Brendon’s brain. 

Shane thumbs through the photos uploaded to his phone, talking about lighting and apertures and the rule of thirds, and what started as far off and tinny at first, is getting louder and louder until it’s a clangor in Brendon’s head. His chest is getting tight. Every word Shane says, Brendon hears in stereo, Jon’s low, lazy drawl dragging through his memory.

He stands up abruptly, the sudden movement cutting Shane off mid-sentence. 

“I’m sorry,” he manages. “I—I can’t, I—I have to go.” He fumbles with his wallet, can’t make sense of the bills, and just grabs them all, throwing them down on the table and hoping it’s enough to cover dinner. “I’m sorry,” he says again. 

He needs to get out of there. He hears Shane call his name, and quickens his steps, hurrying out of the restaurant. His tie is strangling him. He rips it off and throws it in a gutter once he’s on the sidewalk outside, gulping breath after breath on his way home, not looking back once. 

He doesn’t know what the fuck he was thinking, doesn’t know how he ever thought he could do this. 

By the time he gets home, his knees are wobbly and his hands shake when he fits his key in the lock. Jon’s voice is still ringing in his ears, pitch perfect and painfully clear in the quiet apartment. He falls into a chair at the kitchen table and rubs at his mouth with one hand, taking ragged breaths through his nose. 

There’s a bottle of tequila under the sink and if ever he had a need for something to steady his nerves, Brendon figures it’s now. He grabs the bottle and a glass, taking both back to the table, where he pours himself a drink, fighting a gag as the liquid hits his tongue and thinking to himself that he fucking hates tequila. Jon hates it too, actually, but he buys it anyway. 

_Makes you feel like a big man_ says the Jon in Brendon’s mind. He sounds exactly like always. 

Brendon pours another. 

He drinks until the bottle is mostly empty, only a few inches left sloshing around in the bottom, and while it’s nice that the taste goes sort of tasteless after a while and his nerves are definitely steady—stable as a table, as Jon would say—he doesn’t feel particularly drunk, just a kind of abstract sad that he doesn’t really understand until he realizes he’s humming the theme song from _The OC_.

“Oh,” he mumbles to himself, and goes boneless when he tries to stand up, sliding off his chair to land with an “oof” on the floor. He stays down there, deciding that the floor is one of those things that people take for granted, actually quite comfy, and it’s kind of cozy down underneath the table, penned in by a forest of chair legs on three sides with a nice solid wall to lean back against. 

For all that Jon is a mostly happy guy, he gets sad sometimes like anybody else, and every now and then Brendon would find him in tiny, cramped spaces, knees folded up against his chest. “It smells like you,” he’d said, when Brendon had opened up his closet door one day, astonished to find Jon in a ball hugging his legs, clean shirts hanging over his head while Dylan sat beside him, perched on a pile of Brendon’s dirty laundry like a little furry sentinel. 

Brendon wants to try it out, wants to go and sit in Jon’s closet, but he can’t work his limbs properly enough to get out from under the table, and he gives up, adopting Jon’s signature pose as consolation. He rests his forehead on his knees and is only aware that he’s crying when he feels a tentative and soft poke at his thigh, looking over to see Clover sitting beside him, her eyes big and interested. 

“I miss Jon,” he confesses, in case she missed the last six months, and she _merps_ in sympathy, not struggling at all as Brendon gathers her up and nuzzles his face into her soft fur, shoulders shaking. 

At some point he must fall asleep because he’s startled awake by an impatient knocking and Spencer’s voice calling his name through the door. He’s cold and stiff and he thinks maybe he might still be drunk even though it’s clearly morning now, sunlight streaming in through the curtains. His eyes feel like he’s rubbed sand in them and his cheeks feel cakey and sore. He stays put, hoping Spencer will take a hint for once in his life and go away, and of course, the next thing he hears is the snick of a key in the lock. 

“Brendon?” Spencer walks to the bedroom and Brendon considers keeping quiet, staying hidden, but can’t work up the energy to care and extends a stiff leg, pushing a chair away from the table. The legs of Spencer’s jeans are replaced by his face as he crouches down. He looks upset and a little horrified. “What are you doing down here?”

Brendon shrugs and shakes his head, and yep, definitely still drunk. The room tilts a little and he pulls his leg back to his body, not wanting to lose that too along with everything else. 

Spencer pulls a chair away from the table and crawls forward to sit beside Brendon. “Shane just called me,” he says softly. “What happened?”

Brendon shakes his head again and hugs his legs tighter. 

“Brendon. Come on, tell me,” Spencer pleads, quiet and concerned, and Brendon can feel his face contorting as he tries to keep it together, but his dry eyes are suddenly brimming with tears and he’s just so tired of waking up and having this be his life. 

“He’s not Jon,” he says wretchedly, and he’s too worn out to resist when Spencer wraps him up in his arms, apologizing over and over and stroking his hair, shushing and rocking Brendon back and forth while he cries his heart out.

***

Brendon wakes up, hungover, in his own bed with a body on either side of him. Ryan and Spencer. He never mistakes them for Jon. Ryan is too bony, Spencer too tall. It’s good, though. He doesn’t want to forget the way that Jon fits, the ways Jon fits, into everything in Brendon’s life. Sometimes he thinks it’s ridiculous to even worry about it. Brendon can’t go five minutes without something screaming Jon’s name.

Sometimes he thinks he should move, leave this apartment, this neighborhood, leave Chicago, and try to start over again. But then he thinks, what if Jon comes back, what if he comes home, only to find home isn’t where he left it? Brendon would never even know, and as he’s learning, it’s the not knowing that’s the really excruciating part.

***

After the Shane debacle, Brendon packs up the photos of him and Jon, wrapping each one carefully in newspaper so the glass doesn’t scratch. He’s tried three or four times since his cleaning frenzy, but every time he’d pick one up, the guilt would force his hand back down. He didn’t want to feel like he was moving on, getting over Jon, forgetting. He knows now that he’ll never get over Jon, never forget. Jon is in him so deep Brendon could use a backhoe to dig out every memory he’s ever made in his whole life and Jon would still be there, name scrawled over all of Brendon’s cells, his face in the space between synapses.

It’s the twenty-first day of June. Jon has been gone a month of Sundays and Brendon is as in love with him now as he was the day Jon disappeared, and he doesn’t need a wall of photographs to tell him that.

***

Brendon’s students in the summertime are all adults, all the kids going on summer vacation with their parents, music lessons on hold along with the rest of school. He gets a fair amount of college-agers wanting to learn how to play the guitar in the lull between semesters, and the influx means a lot more broken strings, so many in fact, that on a blisteringly hot Friday in July, Brendon opts to take a guitar home to re-string rather than stay one more second at work where the air conditioner crapped out four hours before the end of the day.

The walk home is a soldier’s journey, the heat so intense Brendon can smell the asphalt baking, and he decides to take the direct route home as opposed to his modified post-Jon route, which has a five block detour so he doesn’t have to walk past the Starbucks. He learned his lesson after being an hour and a half late to work one day when he waited outside, positive, _positive_ , that the next person to come in for a holiday peppermint mocha would be Jon. 

He hurries past the coffee shop, not looking where he’s going and steadfastly thinking about chord progressions in case he accidentally catches a glimpse of a dude with dark hair, ‘cause, you know, that’s rare and there’s no one else in the entire city it could be. He knows if he sees one though, he’ll see Jon and not whoever it really is, and he’s so vigilant in his not-looking that he barrels right into someone, cold liquid spilling everywhere and seeping into his clothes.

“Sorry! Fuck, sorry!” he exclaims and looks up, a fatal mistake as it turns out because he does in fact see a guy who looks incredibly like Jon. Brendon waits a beat for the face to shift into a less familiar shape the way they always do.

“No, hey, don’t worry about it,” the guy says easily.

Brendon’s heart jumps into his throat and stays there. 

“It’s kind of nice,” the guy continues. “It’s like, a zillion degrees out here, anyway. Who needs to drink an iced tea lemonade when you can just wear one?” He smiles, grin friendly on his clean shaven face, and Brendon’s world narrows down to just that, just the smile because yeah, okay, this guy’s got big sunglasses on, and his hair is too long, curling in the heat and the humidity, and he’s wearing clothes that Brendon has never seen before, but Brendon would know Jon’s smile and Jon’s voice anywhere and this guy…

This guy is Jon.

“I’m Hector,” Jon says, and sticks out a hand.

Brendon gapes.

“Yeah, I get that a lot,” Jon says with a chuckle. “It’s a family name. But, you know, I like it. It’s always served me well.”

Brendon gapes some more and Jon takes Brendon’s hand and shakes it, one corner of his mouth still quirked up. 

“This is the part where you say your name,” Jon prompts. 

Brendon looks up from where their hands are joined, Jon’s palm flat against his and Brendon’s fingertips touching the thin skin at the inside of Jon’s wrist. “Brendon,” he manages. He’s having some trouble remembering quite how to breathe, and if Brendon’s mind could register anything at all it would be amazement that he’s able to remember his own name in the same moment that he’s holding Jon’s hand.

“Hi, Brendon.” Jon is still smiling away and Brendon can’t make sense of this situation one little bit. 

“Hi,” he parrots back. 

“You play guitar?” Jon asks.

“What?”

Jon nods at the case in Brendon’s other hand and Brendon looks down at it in surprise. “Music teacher,” he says, stumbling over the words a bit. Is that right? He can’t tell, only knows that Jon is still holding his hand. Holy fuck, _Jon_ is _holding his hand_.

“Oh, are you on your way to work somewhere?” Jon asks, retracting his hand. “Sorry, man, I didn’t mean to keep—“

“No!” Brendon practically shouts the word, and he probably seems like a total crazy person, but Jon is acting like he’s going to leave and that just can’t happen, it can’t. “No,” he says again. “I—I’m just… on my way home. You… You could come over.” Okay, now he definitely sounds like a crazy person, probably the kind who keeps pieces of his victims in the freezer. 

But Jon just smiles again and looks pleased and says, “Lead on.”

They walk the rest of the way there, and Brendon frantically tries to figure out what in the name of holy hell is going on. 

Jon is acting like he’s never met Brendon before, like he didn’t waltz into Brendon’s life years ago and steal his heart only to vanish one day without a word. He doesn’t act guilty or sorry or awkward or uncomfortable, just interested, in Brendon, in what Brendon likes and likes to do. It’s like he has no idea who Brendon is. The longer he pays attention though, the more Brendon starts to notice other things. Jon doesn’t seem to know where they’re going, always waits at every cross street for Brendon to tell him to go right, left, or straight. He glides over his s’s with perfect pronunciation. He’s wearing shoes _and socks_ even though it’s July. Jon is a flip-flop Nazi and Brendon can remember getting picked up from classes in _November_ by a sandaled idiot. 

He told Brendon his name is Hector. 

Of all the ways Brendon has imagined finding Jon—and there have been plenty— he’s never once imagined a Jon who didn’t know who he was.

***

Brendon starts to think he might have snapped when they get to the apartment.

The entire affair has the veneer of unreality. Jon tells Brendon he’s a house call computer fix-it guy, which is laughable because Jon can barely make a LOL-cat, and once told Brendon with total conviction that A/C stood for “always connected, you can’t unplug that, Brendon, I’m serious”. He likes playing cards, the kind of long involved trump games that Brendon always associates with Catholics rather than casinos, and he can’t name a single Chicago sports team. His favorite song is _Hey Jude_ , but he mostly thinks The Beatles are overplayed and a little douche-y.

Jon has apparently been in Chicago the entire time. And okay, fine, Chicago is a major city, but it’s really more like a big small town, and you can’t go six blocks without running into someone who knows someone you know wanting to know how you’re doing. It’s one of the reasons that Brendon doesn’t go anywhere anymore. How could Jon have been here the whole time and no one seen him? It’s too much of a coincidence. It’s unbelievable and Brendon wants to believe it anyway, wants so much to believe that Jon is really sitting here in his ( _their_ ) living room, balancing a glass of water on the ledge by the window in the exact spot he always used to. 

But that’s insane. 

Brendon asks Jon where he lives (trying to trick his own hallucination, Jesus) and tries to ignore what a huge creep he sounds like, which is mostly pretty easy because his brain is still on an endless litany of _JonJonJonJonJonJon_ and that takes up a lot of focus. Jon doesn’t seem to notice and answers that he lives way out in the boonies, and normally doesn’t even come in this far for work, but a buddy of his was in a jam and Jon had taken the call. 

“Gentleman’s gentleman,” he says. 

His inflection is exactly the same as every other time Brendon has heard Jon utter those words, cheery and modest and a little self-deprecating, and Brendon’s stomach flips over and there’s a weird shimmering in the corners of his vision. Maybe it’s the heat, and probably it’s the latent psychotic break that Brendon has been nursing since he bumped into some random Jon-sound-alike on the sidewalk in front of a Starbucks, but either way Brendon needs to know if this is a real person or an imaginary boyfriend stress delusion right fucking now. 

“I need to check something,” he says, jumping up and bouncing on the balls of his feet. 

Jon looks intrigued and a little amused, but stays where he is, and says, “Okay.”

“Okay,” Brendon repeats, and heads for the door, realizing too late that this is the first time he’s taken his eyes off of Jon since the sidewalk. If he is a hallucination, well, that’s one thing, but fuck, Brendon doesn’t want to lose this Jon, too, and he looks back over his shoulder, hand already on the doorknob, terrified that all he’ll see is a vacant couch.

“I’ll be here,” Jon assures him. He definitely looks amused now. 

Brendon nods and ducks out the door and sprints down the hall to Ryan and Spencer’s door, rapping his knuckles against it frantically, a steady stream of continuous knocks, quiet so Jon doesn’t hear. 

Finally, _finally_ , Spencer throws open the door. He’s in his work clothes. Well, kind of. His blue shirt is buttoned wrong, untucked and crumpled, and his tie hangs off of his neck with the knot in the center of his chest. His hair is disheveled, his cheeks are flushed, and he’s got no socks on. 

“Brendon, _seriously_ —“

“Jon’s in my apartment,” Brendon hisses at the same time.

Spencer blinks. “ _What?_ ”

“Jon is _in_ my apartment,” he says again. “At least, I think he is. He might be made up, but I can’t tell. Spencer, please, I am freaking out. There’s something— He’s different.”

“What do you mean he’s different?” Spencer glances down the hall.

“He… He doesn’t know me,” Brendon whispers.

Spencer turns back to Brendon, brow furrowing, mouth a thin line. “Ryan,” he says over his shoulder. His voice is tense. “Put some pants on and get out here right now.” 

Brendon pushes open his door, Spencer and Ryan put together and in tow behind him, and, from the music room, hears Jon call out, “Brendon! Your cat likes me!”, surprised and delighted, like it’s an entirely novel experience. Brendon snaps his head around to see if he’s hearing voices, and feels a bubbling relief at the shock on Ryan and Spencer’s faces.

Jon is sitting cross-legged on the floor in the music room, his face written with glee as an ecstatic Dylan walks in circles around him, arching his back into Jon’s hand. 

Spencer’s mouth falls open at the sight and Ryan’s eyes widen comically. 

Jon laughs as Dylan headbutts his face hard into his outstretched hand. “What’s his name?” he wants to know.

Out of the corner of his eye, Brendon can see Ryan and Spencer both look at him and then back at Jon, incredulous.

“Dylan,” Brendon says, voice rusty.

“Like Bob Dylan?” 

Brendon is tempted by a hysterical urge to clap his hands together and crow _Bob Dylan, man!_ just the way Jon did to him when Brendon asked that same question. 

“Yep,” he says instead, clearing his throat. 

Jon looks up then, tearing his attention away from the cat. “Oh, hi,” he says, standing up and brushing his hands off on his pants before extending one to Ryan. “Hector Graabe.”

Ryan’s eyes are saucer-wide, blinking repeatedly, and he slowly extends his hand and puts it in Jon’s to shake. “Ryan,” he says, stunned. “This is Spencer,” he adds when Jon takes Spencer’s hand and Spencer stays silent, bowled over. There’s a long pause where they all just kind of stare at each other.

“You guys are a little weird,” Jon informs them. “I like it.” 

A beeping sounds at his wrist and Brendon stares. Jon hates watches. 

“Crap. I gotta go,” he says, and Brendon kind of wants to jump him, cling like one of those Zebra mussels that everyone is so worried about, because he’s just got Jon back, he’s here, he’s real, and now he wants to leave again. Brendon wants to dig his claws in and never let go, pull out stacks of pictures and prove to him that he’s Jon, _Jon_ , not Hector, and that he actually _doesn’t_ have to go anywhere because he belongs _here_ with Brendon, but something holds him back, and Jon flicks his eyes up from his wrist to look at Brendon shyly through his curling fringe. “But, um, maybe you’d want to hang out again?”

Brendon is so busy freaking out about the prospect of Jon leaving that he doesn’t answer right away, and Jon adds, “I mean, your cat already likes me, and I hear cats are excellent judges of character.” He smiles. “Coffee? Tomorrow at six? We can meet at our Starbucks.”

“Your Starbucks?” Ryan repeats, eyes narrowing at Jon.

“Brendon assaulted me on the sidewalk today,” Jon clarifies. It’s not much of an explanation. “He felt my drink was out of line.”

“You don’t even know him,” Spencer blurts out, and Ryan kicks him in the shin. 

Jon gives Spencer an appraising look. “True,” he says. “But I’d like to. And I suppose he could turn out to be an axe murderer, or he could find out that I, you know, eat babies, but until either of those things happen, I guess whether or not I see him again is up to Brendon, isn’t it?” He raises his eyebrows challengingly, and Brendon is glad that Jon is busy glaring at Spencer and doesn’t see Brendon’s jaw drop. 

“Tomorrow,” Brendon nods, and Jon’s expression transforms as he turns from Spencer to Brendon. “Six.”

“Great.” Jon smiles big and his eyes crinkle, so familiar that Brendon feels his breath catch. “Tomorrow.”

Jon leaves, and when the elevator doors close on his little wave, Brendon, bracketed on both sides by Ryan and Spencer, takes an involuntary step forward and wonders if he’s just made the biggest mistake of his entire life letting Jon walk away from him again.

***

Ryan and Spencer and Brendon have an emergency what-the-fuck meeting as soon as Jon leaves. It involves a lot of Ryan hitting Spencer for being “a rude jerkoff, Spence, what the fuck was that?”, a lot of Spencer apologizing, and a lot of Brendon pacing back and forth, running his hands through his hair and muttering, “oh my God, oh my God, oh my God”.

“He seems okay, at least,” Spencer says. “Ow! Fuck, Ryan, quit hitting me.”

“How does he seem okay? He doesn’t know us. He doesn’t know Brendon!” 

“I mean, drama queen, that he doesn’t have his skull bashed in, he’s clean, and it looks like he eats and has a place to live.”

“Oh yeah, great qualities. Real glass half full outlook. Good thing there’s nothing really bad like _he’s lost his fucking mind_. Where the fuck has he been all this time?”

“Here,” says Brendon absently. “He’s been here.”

“Like here in town? How did we not know?”

“Jon’s alive,” Brendon says, not really paying attention. It’s mostly for himself, just to hear it, to see how it sounds in his ears and feels in his mouth, but it stops Ryan and Spencer’s bickering. “Holy shit.”

“Yeah,” Spencer says, and Ryan swears and runs his hand over his face.

“I need to sit down,” says Brendon.

“You are sitting down,” Ryan points out after a beat. 

“Oh.”

“Hector Graabe,” says Spencer, shaking his head. “Fuck.”

It’s a Friday, and it’s the first time Brendon has seen Jon in months, and he’s so amazed that it almost doesn’t even matter that it’s not exactly Jon.

***

Brendon goes to the Starbucks a half hour early and waits, crumpling the shit out of a paper napkin. He’s sure Jon won’t show, that Brendon’s had his chance to get him back and he squandered it. He’s working himself in to a panic when he feels a heavy hand clap on his shoulder, and he squawks in alarm, limbs flailing.

“You know, despite what I told your friend Spencer, I’m not really a baby eater,” Jon promises.

Brendon turns around in his chair, reminding himself that he used to be able to be, well, if not normal, then at least reasonably not a spaz around Jon, and decides that his best bet is just to fake it till he makes it.

“It would be okay if you were,” Brendon shrugs, rising from his chair. Normal. Normal coffee dates require standing in line. He can do this. He can. “Spencer’s younger than me, anyway.”

Jon laughs, and Brendon’s heart flips over in his chest. “Good to know. Tender meat,” he says, tapping the side of his nose. 

There’s a lull in the conversation as they stand in line and Brendon sneaks sideways glances at Jon while he pretends to read the menu. Spencer’s right; it does seem like whatever Jon has been doing all these months, he’s been taking care of himself. He looks great, tan and comfortable and really, not crazy at all. To be fair, Jon could probably be a 300 pound hunchback with a shriveled up baby head growing out of his shoulder and Brendon would think he looked great, but still. Jon is wearing a white T-shirt and jeans, and again, actual shoes with actual laces. The shoes are one of the weirdest parts about this whole thing, and Brendon just can’t get used to them. He looks back up to Jon’s face and sees Jon watching him. 

Busted.

“Hi,” Jon says with a knowing little smile.

“Hi,” Brendon says back, and can’t help the embarrassed flush that stains his cheeks. He realizes he’s tapping his foot incessantly and stops, inhaling deep to get a hold of himself and looking back up at the menu.

Brendon orders his coffee decaf, for obvious reasons, and Jon gets a venti house blend, same as always. Brendon does his best not to put too much stock in it, but when Jon tells the barista, “Black like my heart,” also same as always, Brendon has to take a big mouthful of scalding coffee to distract himself from the memory of all the times he’s heard Jon use that phrase.

They decide to go walk around outside, the weather straying from its typical billion degrees for once. Jon doesn’t say anything about the whackadoo opinion on the sides of their cups, but does proceed to mock Brendon’s coffee preferences. 

“Decaf?” he inquires, clucking disapprovingly and wrinkling his nose in Brendon’s direction.

“Low tolerance, I guess,” Brendon replies. “Ex-Mormon.”

“No shit? Wow. Never met an ex-Mormon before.”

“Oh, we’re good at all kinds of things,” Brendon tells him. “Very industrious.”

Jon smiles into his cup. “I bet.”

They walk down to the lake and Jon tells Brendon that he likes the ducks but only from a reasonable distance. 

“What? They’ll peck your eyes out,” Jon defends himself when Brendon starts to laugh. “Don’t you ever watch _Animal Planet_? They’re lizards with wings. You can’t tell me that doesn’t freak you out.”

They spar back and forth, trying to one up the other with what things in nature are really the freakiest. Brendon sticks to “all marine life ever” while Jon maintains that things that can fly have no business existing. It’s a conversation that Brendon’s never actually had with Jon before, and for a whole minute, he forgets that Jon was ever gone in the first place. 

“Have you ever seen a lamprey?” Brendon demands. “It’s like eight million teeth in one mouth.”

Jon scoffs in the face of this obvious freakshow. “Man, no way. Birds of Paradise. More like Birds of an Acid Trip Nightmare.”

“Hagfish.”

“Pigeons!”

“Clams!” Brendon lays down triumphantly. It’s his ace in the hole. Seriously, yuck.

Jon laughs and laughs, wanting to know what Brendon’s problem with clams could possibly be (“they don’t even have a face, much less teeth”), and Brendon feels his smile slide off his face, the question like a sucker punch, because Jon knows what Brendon’s problem with clams is.

“The smell,” he says weakly, swallowing hard to keep his coffee from coming back up. 

Jon allows it and challenges Brendon to a stone throwing contest to settle the debate, but it only highlights the problem, because even though Jon is back, he’s not here, not really. 

Brendon isn’t on a date with Jon. He’s on a date with a Jon impersonator, with Hector, and Hector doesn’t know Brendon, doesn’t remember him at all beyond the last day or so. He doesn’t know that Brendon names his guitars or likes tea with honey when he’s sick or when his birthday is or that he blows his nose in the shower. He doesn’t know these things because he’s not Jon, and the weight of that steals the breath from Brendon’s lungs, leaves him feeling hopeless and frail.

A rock grates rough against Brendon’s hand and he blinks, looking at Jon’s—Hector’s—face. 

“Show me what you got,” he dares, and the rest of him—the interests, the memories, the shoes—may be Hector, but the smile on his face—well, that’s all Jon. 

They throw rocks into Lake Michigan and while it turns out that Brendon can’t throw for shit, his stone makes an impressive fourteen skips before disappearing beneath the surface, and Jon calls it a draw. 

He’s here, and he’s okay, and he’s Jon, but he’s not. 

It’s not ideal, and it’s not easy, but it’s something, and after eight long months of missing Jon with every breath he took, Brendon is willing to adapt his strategy.

***

After that first date, Brendon makes a concentrated effort to separate Jon and Hector in his mind.

Jon is the most laid-back, chilled out person Brendon knows. He’s diplomatic, keeps his cool even when tempers flare, and is pretty good at diffusing a tense situation. He likes getting baked on rainy days, is always happy to let someone bounce ideas off of him, and has been known on more than one occasion to sit on the floor if a cat is in his spot. He’s hardly a doormat, but he’s very go-with-the-flow, a likeable, all around get-along-with-everyone kind of guy.

Hector, by contrast, has got very clear likes and hates which he is very vocal about. It’s not that he’s not willing to compromise, but he makes damn sure that people know why he thinks this particular roadway is the best route, or that brand of ketchup is sub-par compared to this one, before he relents, and he always calls in his favors. He’s sarcastic and quick, and Brendon can see how he’s probably a bit of a scrapper, remembers the way he stared Spencer down that first day, getting right in his face despite the substantial height difference, shoulders squared. 

The more time Brendon spends with Hector, the more tells he sees. Hector and Jon have got the same face, but they wear it differently, something about the way the flesh sits on the cheekbones lets Brendon remember that it’s not Jon Walker who’s goading Clover with a laser pointer, growling at her and laughing when she runs into a door all hopped up on catnip toys. Hector is a compulsive pen clicker and he sits backwards in kitchen chairs, his arms crossed over the backrests. Being the smiley-est must be in his DNA, because Hector’s got a repertoire of regularly used smiles that look nothing like any of Jon’s. He cracks his knuckles in a way that Jon never does.

They’re different in a lot of ways, but one thing that both Hector and Jon have in common is the way they are around Brendon—engaged, attentive, interested, like Brendon is the answer to a riddle they haven’t heard yet. They remember every word Brendon says, about whatever, and the first time Hector brings him a bag of penny candy, coke bottles and marshmallow strawberries and none of those gross spongy frogs, Brendon doesn’t know what to say. He eats one of each before Hector mentions casually that he’s “put a spell on those, you know, now you’re my slave for life. Pretty good deal for a buck sixty, right?”, and when Brendon beans him in the forehead with a marshmallow, Hector grumbles that he was overcharged.

It’s not always easy, and more than once he gets caught up and makes a reference to some obscure thing that only Jon would understand, something that leaves Hector puzzled and blinking at him in confusion. 

Brendon will never be able to forget Jon. Even if Hector wasn’t around, Brendon would see Jon in every guy with a camera, smell him in every cup of coffee, hear him in every note of every Christmas carol. Jon is a part of Brendon and Brendon will love him for the rest of his life, and it’s why, as July slips into August, he’s amazed to discover that he’s maybe falling a little bit in love with Hector, too.

***

Brendon decides to teach Hector to play the guitar on a Monday.

They’re sitting in the music room, listening to a WEEN CD (Hector’s pick) while Brendon plays along, strumming easily and humming to himself. Hector plays with Dylan and watches Brendon with a fascinated look on his face.

“I thought you said you’d never heard this song before,” he says, as Dylan freaks out on the cuff of his jeans. 

Brendon shrugs. “I haven’t. I just pick this kind of thing up. Plus, this song goes on for like ten minutes, and it’s mostly just a three chord repeat.” Hector gives him a blank look, and Brendon shows him on the neck of the guitar. “See? Here, here, and here.” He shifts his fingers on the frets. 

“You figured that out from listening to this song for thirty seconds?”

Brendon shrugs again. “I could teach you,” he offers.

Hector laughs. “Thanks, but no thanks. I can barely play a triangle.”

“Dude, don’t be a baby. It’s easy.”

“I don’t know,” he hedges. “You’d really have to be a hell of a teacher.”

“Are you saying I’m not? Are you saying you doubt my ability to teach you fantastic fingering?” Brendon demands, activating his brain-to-mouth filter a second too late and yes, really hearing those words come out of his mouth. 

Hector conceals a snort. Poorly. “Well, I hear ex-Mormons are good at all kinds of things,” he says, trying and failing to keep a grin off his face. 

Brendon takes a page out of Spencer’s book and glares for all he’s worth, resolutely ignoring the heat in his face. “Shut up,” he says, and gives Hector’s foot a kick, lifting the guitar strap up from around his neck and plunking it in Hector’s lap, deaf to any protests.

Hector holds the guitar like he’s afraid he’ll break it, and Brendon rolls his eyes. 

“Move over,” he instructs and sits behind him. “Pick. Frets. Strings,” he says, tucking a plastic triangle into Hector’s right hand and tapping the different parts of the guitar as he goes. 

His hand slides over Hector’s on the neck of the guitar to position his fingers right, and Brendon is suddenly aware of what he’s doing and how close he is. Brendon’s chest is snug against Hector’s back and he feels Hector suck in a breath as their fingers touch. His heart thuds against his ribs. He’s close enough to smell Hector’s shampoo, and to feel the heat radiating off the back of his neck. 

They’ve never really talked about whatever it is they’re doing together, dancing around each other, flirting but never delivering. For the most part, Brendon is happy not to over-analyze it, not sure how absolute he can keep the Jon-Hector separation, and not wanting to do anything he’ll regret later. So far it’s always worked for them, but now, Brendon sees that this plan of attack may have been detrimental to his cause, especially if his cause involves making out. He’s almost surprised to realize he wants that with Hector, a lot, and can’t believe they’ve never done it before. It seems like an incredible oversight.

Brendon keeps Hector’s fingers on the right strings, and curls his other hand around Hector’s, and strums, just once.

“Just that easy,” he says softly, and when he turns his head slightly, Hector isn’t looking at the frets, he’s looking at Brendon. His breathing is a little fast, mouth open slightly, and Brendon can feel a thrumming running through Hector’s hands, his arms, everywhere they touch. His gaze drops to Brendon’s mouth and Brendon is close enough to make out every individual eyelash. 

“Brendon Urie! We need you to settle a bet!” comes Ryan’s voice from the doorway, and just like that, the moment is gone. 

Ryan goes statue-still when he sees them on the floor and gawks for a second before backing away. 

“Sorry! Fuck, the door was open. It—It can wait.” Ryan gives Hector a scrutinizing look, and then looks at Brendon. His hands are held up in front of him, like he’s warding off an attack, and Brendon hopes it has something to do with the nuclear level hatred he’s telepathically projecting at Ryan. “Sorry,” he says again, and turns and flees.

“Ryan Ross, ladies and gentlemen,” Brendon mutters, and moves back into his own space. He feels awkward, squirrely, but it dissipates when he glances at Hector and sees him studying his balled up hands. “What’s wrong?” 

Hector shakes his head, mouth tense.

“No, hey, come on. What?” Brendon presses.

“Your friends don’t like me,” Hector says, looking at Brendon, daring him to say otherwise.

“Why would you think that?”

“Uh, because it’s true?” Hector raises an eyebrow. “They’re waiting for me to screw up. They watch me too close.”

Brendon can’t deny that. Ryan and Spencer are hella suspicious of Hector, and being friends with only each other for so long has kind of crippled them as far as regular human interaction goes. Brendon had only gotten under their radar in the first place thanks to Brent and the tenacity that Brendon’s all-consuming desire for friends had given him. And there are more specific problems. Ryan doesn’t forget wrongs the way other people do, not the bad ones, and the ways Jon’s absence just about killed Brendon are pretty much as bad as it gets. Spencer doesn’t like things he can’t fix. Asking them to do any different—Brendon may as well ask a fish not to swim. 

It’s not that Ryan and Spencer dislike Hector, but they don’t trust him, and it shows, and it’s just as bad. 

“I watch you close,” Brendon points out, trying for distraction instead.

“Yeah, but when it’s you, I like it,” Hector confesses, with a blush and a little smile. “I like _you_ ,” he adds, and Brendon can’t quite keep the corners of his mouth level, his lips stretching into a smile of his own.

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah.”

“I like you, too,” Brendon says, as he turns completely into a thirteen-year-old girl, giddy lightness in his chest and all. 

Hector’s smile goes full blown, and he chews on his bottom lip to contain it, and maybe he’s a little bit of a thirteen-year-old girl, too, because he seems to be having difficulty looking at Brendon for more than five seconds at a time, glancing up through his bangs and then looking away again, smiling harder each time it happens. 

Brendon finds a second guitar for himself to use, and teaches Hector simple chords, shows him how to hold his hands by demonstrating on the neck of his own guitar and directing him to do the same. They spend the rest of the evening listening to music and sending each other not-so-secret smiles over the boundary of their guitars, and by the end of the night, Brendon may have reconsidered his earlier plan to use the emergency key that Spencer made for him and murder Ryan in his sleep.

***

Brendon doesn’t tell anyone in Jon’s life that he’s found him. Not Jon’s parents, not his brothers, not Tom or any of Jon’s other friends. Ryan and Spencer are the only ones who know.

If confronted, Brendon would say that he doesn’t know what to tell them. They’ll be expecting Jon, and what they’ll get is Hector, and Brendon just can’t see a way to tell them that will bring anything but more sadness and pain. He might as well wait a little while and see if Jon snaps back in, wait until there’s really a Jon for people to reunite with before he makes the reunion calls. He would also say that he’s afraid of what it would do to Jon/Hector’s brain. There’s no overlap between the two lives that Brendon has been able to suss out, and telling Hector about Jon and trying to force him into Jon’s life might really hurt him. Jamming a round peg into a square hole inevitably ruins both parts, and it’s the last thing Brendon wants. 

This is what he’d say if confronted.

Really though, it’s that he’s afraid that if Hector finds out about Jon—finds out that Brendon knew him and loved him before, another life, another him—if he finds out these things, then whatever happened to make Jon go away in the first place will happen again and there’ll be someone new in Hector’s place, someone who wouldn’t know Brendon if he fell over him. Brendon can’t do those eight months over again, he _can’t_ , and if it means he has to keep Jon’s family and friends in the dark in order to keep Hector, then that’s what he’ll do.

It’s selfish, and greedy, and cowardly. It displays a total lack of regard for the feelings of others, and possibly a criminal element, since Jon is technically still a missing person. 

He knows all of this, but he still doesn’t tell anyone, because when Hector smiles at him, Brendon only feels proud that he put that smile there and fucking lucky to be able to receive it, and the thought of having that disappear again, for any reason, is just unthinkable.

***

It’s a Saturday afternoon and they’re going out for lunch with Ryan and Spencer. It’s a double date. Brendon sets it up. He wants Ryan and Spencer to ease up on Hector, but they’re understandably having trouble separating Hector from Jon. The way Brendon sees it, the way around that is to spend some time together. Hence, double date.

He extracts a promise from both of them to be nicer (“you’re making him sad”), but in the end, Spencer still brings his laptop with him.

“I have to,” he says, when Brendon gives him a what-the-fuck look and gestures crossly at the computer. “Brendon, I do. We just got a new system at work. I have to transfer all of this stuff, and it’s taking forever. It’s either this or don’t come at all. I’m sorry.”

Ryan, at least, doesn’t bring a book with him, but it’s still awkward when they all meet Hector at the sandwich place. Spencer says hello, but otherwise sticks to his work, and Ryan talks to Brendon when he talks at all, mostly preferring to amuse himself by twiddling the fringe of his many scarves and stealing the tomatoes from Spencer’s sandwich, even though he said no tomatoes on his and always does. Brendon makes a mental note to give both of his pathetic excuses for best friends a good thrashing later.

Halfway through the meal, Spencer makes a little squeak and buries his face in his hands, groaning. “I give up,” he moans. “Ryan, write a book. I’m quitting my job.”

“Why? What happened?”

“I don’t know. It was there, and then I did something and it wasn’t.” Spencer rubs his face and heaves a defeated sigh. A beaten Spencer is a rare and sad thing to see—when things don’t go his way he usually leans more toward bitchy and enraged—and it reminds Brendon a little bit of a sick grizzly bear. 

“Fuck and shit,” Spencer mutters, and Ryan rubs his arm consolingly.

Hector watches this exchange, his eyes darting back and forth between Ryan and Spencer, chewing slowly. “Mind if I take a look?” he asks, voice cautious and even.

“Be my guest.” Spencer doesn’t even lift his face out of his hands, openly moping. 

Hector wipes his hands on a napkin and clears a place in front of him for the laptop. Brendon watches Hector as he does whatever on Spencer’s computer, stubby fingers deft over the keys, tongue pressed against his front teeth as he works. He clearly knows what he’s doing, and after a minute or two, he sets the computer back in front of Spencer.

“Done and done.”

Spencer looks up at Hector in surprise, and then at his screen. “That’s it,” he says, and looks at Hector again. “You fixed it. How did you do that? Where was it?”

“Your new system has an auto save external to the one in the program. There’s a temp folder squirreled away in the main drive. I put a shortcut on your desktop in case it happens again.”

Spencer is looking at Hector like he’s just hung the moon. “Thank you,” he says seriously, and extends a hand over the top of the computer screen. Spencer doesn’t like shaking hands, thinks it’s an epidemiological clusterfuck, but he knows Hector does. It’s an olive branch, a clear attitude of gratitude, and Hector takes it.

“You’re welcome,” he replies, and Brendon catches a glimpse of a satisfied smile before Hector pops an olive into his mouth.

The rest of the meal goes much better. Ryan asks what Hector thinks of Chuck Palahniuk, and he makes scandalized noises when Hector tells him that he thinks hardcopy books are on the way out. Spencer even puts his laptop away. Hector smiles a lot, and Brendon talks as little as possible, just watching his family get to know each other, and thinks things might really be okay after all.

***

Ryan corners Brendon in the elevator, just once, on his way back from the mailboxes.

“Are you sure about this?” he asks. “With Hector?”

Brendon doesn’t really know how to answer that. 

“He’s my one,” he finally says, like that’s any kind of answer. 

But Ryan just nods like he knows exactly what Brendon means. “Yeah.”

***

Sometimes Brendon imagines Jon’s absence as a physical injury, an abscess where Jon used to be and has since been torn away. He’s still got a raw and weeping Jon-shaped hole inside him, and no one else will ever fit there the way Jon would, but Brendon is finding out that the edges aren’t steely sharp like the pain had led him to believe. They’re softer, with more give, more inflamed tissue than scarred, and Hector, for all that he’s not Jon, is growing into a near perfect fit, his edges complimentary, knitting themselves to Brendon’s ragged margins more every day.

***

Hector kisses Brendon for the first time on Ryan’s birthday.

It’s almost nothing, a gentle brush of lips while Brendon’s standing half in a closet, looking for the right belt to go with his vest (a tribute to Ryan that Brendon knows he’ll appreciate), sweet and unassuming and kind of perfect.

Brendon has a flashback to every time Jon has ever kissed him ever, and freaks out.

He doesn’t quite sob, but it’s a near thing, and it comes out as a scared little whimper against Hector’s mouth before he jerks his mouth away, shame forcing his eyes shut. 

“Brendon?”

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, willing the floor to swallow him up. 

He feels a hand cup his cheek and opens his eyes to see Hector studying him, a comprehension stealing over his features that Brendon would say was almost horrified if it wasn’t so sad.

“Something bad happened to you,” he says softly. It’s not a question. “It’s why your friends are so protective. Why you never talk about yourself.”

Brendon averts his eyes. He can’t exactly deny it without giving a hell of an explanation. He swallows hard, and says “It isn’t you,” and wishes he didn’t sound like such a chick. 

“Brendon,” Hector says tentatively, “there’s something you should know about me.”  
Brendon has steadfastly avoided asking about the details of Hector’s life before Brendon. He honestly doesn’t want to know. He doesn’t want to know if Hector comes with a tragic family backstory or what he thinks his life was like growing up. He doesn’t want to see where Hector lives, or where he works, or know who his friends are. It’s a huge double standard, since Brendon wants Hector to know all these things about him, and as far as long-term plans go, it pretty much sucks hard, but Brendon feels like knowing all these things, hearing Hector say them out loud, in Jon’s voice, will make them real in a way he’s just not ready for.

“What?” Brendon’s voice doesn’t shake, it _doesn’t_.

“I think—I think there’s something, here, with me and you. I don’t know, it just, it feels like it fits.” He gives his lip a nervous chew. “Nothing like this has ever really happened to me before.” 

Brendon can’t begin to have the slightest idea what to do with that, so he doesn’t say anything. 

“I don’t ever want you to feel like you have to do something you don’t want to do. There’s no rush. I’m in this, Brendon. I don’t mind waiting.” He squeezes Brendon’s hand in both of his.

“You don’t want to know?” Brendon asks, unable to believe he’s dodged this bullet.

Hector smiles. “No rush,” he says again.

They go to dinner at Ryan and Spencer’s and Ryan heartily approves of Brendon’s vest and belt combo. Brendon and Hector make fun of Ryan’s increasingly ridiculous King for a Day requests and of Spencer’s willingness to grant them, and give each other dopier and dopier smiles to further ridicule them both, until Spencer threatens to let Ryan pick a foreign language movie (“Foreign language _film_!” Ryan corrects) to watch if they don’t straighten up and fly right.

Brendon holds Hector’s hand under the table the entire meal and continues to do so under the blanket during the movie afterwards, tracing the knuckle ridges with the tip of a finger. Somewhere around the halfway point, Hector burrows his face into Brendon’s neck to stifle a laugh, and Brendon’s heart stutters and skips as it sinks in that Hector told Brendon he loved him.

It’s the last Sunday in August. Brendon has known for a while that he’s falling in love with Hector, and now Hector has told Brendon that he loves him, in Jon’s voice, and made the whole thing real, and if that doesn’t make Brendon the luckiest fuck on the planet, well, then he doesn’t know what does.

***

Once Brendon gets over his Jon vs Hector complex, he realizes what a fucking idiot he’s been to not be kissing Hector this entire time.

Kissing Hector is different than kissing Jon, which is to be expected. For one thing, he’s clean shaven, and the glide of soft skin against Brendon’s jaw is something he’s not used to, but surprised to discover he likes, given how the rasp of Jon’s beard on Brendon’s cheeks always made his toes curl and his voice break. Hector’s hands move a lot—big, sweeping circles over Brendon’s back, fingers sinking into Brendon’s hair to pull him close, never pushy, never demanding. He pays a lot of attention to Brendon’s collarbones, which Brendon personally thinks are really weird-looking, sticking out too far and making him look like he’s got some kind of wasting disease.

“I think they make you look hot,” Hector says, and mouths his way from one end of them to the other, stopping in the middle to dip his tongue in the hollow of Brendon’s throat. 

There are similarities, too, of course. They’ve got the same mouth, and the same taste, and Brendon groans unmistakably the first time Hector swipes his tongue inside Brendon’s mouth. They hold Brendon’s jaw the same, thumb sweeping over his cheekbone, taking in the view before leaning in, and Hector’s inhale when Brendon turns his head to the side to suck the tip of that thumb into his mouth, lips curving around it in a grin before he nips at it lightly, is identical to Jon’s, eyes glazing over the same way. Brendon tends to get a bit of a rambly mouth in situations like these, and when he mumbles an apology, years of being told to sit still and be quiet rearing its ugly head, Hector growls a breathless “Stop and I’ll kill you,” and if not for the perfect pronunciation of the word _stop_ , Brendon would swear that it’s Jon. 

They don’t do anything other than kiss, but they’ll go for hours without a break, lips numb and jaws sore by the time they stop, and sometimes at work, Brendon will touch his fingers to his mouth and smile, still able to feel the ghost of the pressure from the night before.

***

On a very special Thursday in September, Brendon calls Hector and tells him that his presence is required, and that he better not be late.

“I think I can move some stuff around,” Hector says, as if he doesn’t come over every day, staying until an hour that is frankly ludicrous considering how far away he lives, and Brendon can hear the smile in his voice over the phone.

When he arrives, Brendon meets him at the door and snakes his arms around Hector, burying his face in the warmth of his neck. Hector hugs him back, but when he goes to let go, Brendon clings a little bit, and they stand there in the doorway, holding on to each other for another long moment.

“Hey,” Hector says gently, rubbing his nose against Brendon’s. “You okay?”

“Better than,” he says, nodding. “I have something for you.”

“Oooh. Present.”

They go and sit on the couch and Brendon moves a guitar that’s in his way, setting it in Hector’s lap. Hector’s arms curl around it, and he plucks out a few idle notes while he waits. 

“So where’s my present, Urie?” he asks when Brendon just sits there. “Chop, chop.”

Brendon feels his mouth twitch into a smile, and he glances pointedly at the guitar in Hector’s lap. 

Hector looks down like maybe Brendon snuck a gift into his lap while he wasn’t looking, and then looks back up at Brendon again, his face a mask of shock. 

“Brendon,” he breathes. “I can’t take this.”

“Why not? Is there one you like better?” Brendon already knows there’s not. Hector picks up Jon’s bass every time they play, his hands settling in the right spots automatically, fingers knowing the way even if his brain doesn’t.

“No, it’s—“ He breaks off and an upset look crosses his face, eyes widening and hand coming up to clap over his mouth. “Oh no,” he says into his hand. “This is an anniversary present, isn’t it? Two months. I forgot. I’m sorry—“

It’s been years since Brendon thought of anniversaries in terms of months, but Hector is right; today is two months to the day since Jon wandered back into Brendon’s life with a new name and no memories of him and still managed to turn Brendon’s life around anyway, just like the first time. Hector is still babbling an apology over not getting Brendon anything, and Brendon just laughs, because it’s September 17th, and it’s Hector’s birthday, whether he knows it or not, and who ever heard of giving presents on your own birthday? He braces his hands on Hector’s knees, leaning forward over the guitar to shut him up with a kiss. 

“I love you, Hector Graabe,” he says, still chuckling a little, but not meaning it any less. It’s the first time he’s ever said it out loud to Hector, and Hector pulls in a surprised breath.

“You didn’t know?” Brendon asks, a tease in his voice.

“I just… I just like hearing it. I love you, too.”

There’s a long pause where neither of them say anything and just smile stupidly at each other, Brendon’s hands still on Hector’s knees, Hector’s thumb brushing the knob of bone in Brendon’s wrist.

“But I still can’t take this,” Hector finally says.

“Well, _I’m_ not keeping it,” Brendon says, “so I guess there’s some bum out there who’ll be enjoying a roaring trash can fire tonight. I’m surprised, though. I know how you’re unmoved by the misfortune of others.”

Hector gives Brendon an exasperated look, but Brendon can tell his resolve is weakening. “I don’t have anything for you,” he tries.

“You’ve got a real problem accepting gifts, don’t you?” Brendon asks, and sighs, waving his hand imperiously. “Fine, then. Play me a song, ingrate. I’m serious,” he says, when Hector just rolls his eyes. “Earn your keep.”

Hector does play him a song, something with a jaunty melody, and he doesn’t fumble the notes once, every one clear and true. When he finishes, Brendon can’t help it, he has to kiss him again, and murmurs “I knew you’d be great at it” against Hector’s lips. Hector beams, and agrees to accept the guitar, but only on the condition that “it lives here, at your place”. 

Hector winds up snooping through Brendon’s movies and Brendon’s throat gets tight for a moment when Hector finds Jon’s copy of _Aladdin_.

“Dude, I can’t believe you have this,” he exclaims, eyes lighting up. “On VHS!” 

Watching _Aladdin_ on their birthdays has been a Brendon-and-Jon tradition as long as they’ve been together. The only missed one was this last birthday of Brendon’s. He’d waited all day for Jon to come home so they could curl up on the couch and settle in to the opening bars of _Arabian Nights_ , and when he finally accepted that it wouldn’t happen, he was so wrung out he just couldn’t muster up the energy to care about continuing tradition. Since Hector, Brendon believes in second chances again, in do-overs and making things right, and one little lapse won’t deter him from that.

Brendon pops the cassette into the VCR and leans into the space Hector makes for him against his side, his arm a comforting weight over Brendon’s shoulders. Hector drops a kiss into Brendon’s hair, and as the cartoon starts, he says, in a soft voice next to Brendon’s ear, “You’ll have to help me with the songs. I can’t remember the words.”

Brendon can handle that.

***

Brendon is having a sex problem, in that he wants it, and he doesn’t know how to go about getting it.

The obvious answer is Hector, and it’s not exactly like Brendon is about to go around picking up randoms, but having sex with Hector presents some unique problems that Brendon does not feel remotely qualified to handle properly, and to be honest, Brendon hasn’t missed Jon this much since those first few early dates with Hector. It isn’t that he doesn’t love Hector in his own right, but with Jon, Brendon’s already _done_ all this pre-sex freaking out. Jon knows what Brendon likes, and Brendon knows what Jon likes, and for all that Hector and Jon inhabit the same body, and Brendon is pretty sure that Jon’s sensitive spots are Hector’s too, Jon is safe harbor while Hector is uncharted waters, and really, anything could happen. 

Jon is a dynamo in the sack, the best of Brendon’s life, has probably ruined Brendon for anyone else, and Brendon just isn’t sure if that extends to alternate personalities. Is it cheating on Jon to have sex with Hector? Is it unfair to Hector to be comparing him to Jon? Brendon doesn’t know what the rules are, only knows that he loves them both, and wants to do right by both of them, but it’s getting harder and harder to let Hector go home every night while Brendon goes to bed alone.

***

On the second last Tuesday of September, Brendon licks a hot stripe up Hector’s throat, smiling to himself at the buzz he feels on his tongue as Hector groans and swallows hard. Hector’s fingers dig into the soft part of Brendon’s hips and Brendon squirms a little from his perch in Hector’s lap, aching in his jeans, and when Hector kisses him, craning his neck up to meet Brendon above him, Brendon’s hips rock forward without his say so.

“Okay,” Hector says hoarsely, pulling his mouth from Brendon’s. “That’s… Yeah, I should go.”

“Go?” Brendon whines, and threads his fingers into Hector’s hair the way he knows Hector likes. Hector’s eyelids flutter shut with a sigh, and Brendon thinks he could probably nip this whole going thing in the bud and get back to the kissing. “I don’t think _that’s_ a good idea,” he murmurs and drags his tongue over Hector’s bottom lip, humming in pleased surprise as Hector surges forward and catches his mouth. 

“Brendon,” he whispers, and Brendon doesn’t think his name has ever sounded so good. “If I don’t leave here in the next ten seconds, I’m going to have a real problem keeping my go slow promise.” As it is, Hector’s hands are already stroking the stripe of skin at the small of Brendon’s back, his fingertips leaving hot trails all over Brendon’s skin. 

“So don’t.” Brendon is sick of whispery games. He’s sick of waiting and saying goodnight to Hector when all he really wants is more, more, _more_. 

Hector looks at him quizzically, and Brendon wants to smack himself in the face a little bit for making this so complicated, when jumping in with both feet is such an obvious option. 

“Break it,” Brendon urges, and Hector’s eyes go hot and dark before he bolts to his feet, hands steady on Brendon’s hips so he doesn’t get dumped on the floor.

“Bedroom,” Hector says into Brendon’s mouth, a statement with which Brendon heartily agrees. 

They only make it halfway undressed before Brendon needs to touch Hector again, fumbling in the darkened room, and he pulls him forward by the waist of his jeans. The first contact of their bare chests makes him suck in a hard breath through clenched teeth. He can feel Hector’s heartbeat in his own ribs, fast and strong and so fucking good, and Brendon thought he’d never get to feel that again and now here it is, his for the taking.

“Hector, fuck,” he gasps, and Hector tips his face forward from where their foreheads rest against each other’s and proceeds to suck the air from Brendon’s lungs. Hector noses his way under Brendon’s chin to suck a mark into his collarbone, hands splayed wide and roaming over his back, tangling in the hair at the nape of his neck, nipping at his jaw when Brendon’s head falls back. 

“Don’t stop doing that,” he begs, and he’s not even really sure what part he’s talking about, only wants Hector to never, ever stop touching him. 

Hector seems perfectly happy to comply and Brendon babbles pleas and promises and profanities until he may or may not be forming whole words anymore, every nerve ending sparking with electricity. At some point, Brendon’s legs stop working and he has the presence of mind to be grateful that there happens to be a nice big bed conveniently located right here. Hector palms Brendon’s dick through his pants and Brendon groans loudly.

“God, Hector—“

“ _Brendon!_ ” 

The hand disappears and Brendon’s eyes snap open before he remembers it’s dark. It takes him a minute to remember how to speak with a specific thought in mind.

“What?” 

“ _What?_ You just called me some other guy’s name, that’s what. Dude, _not cool_.”

It takes Brendon a moment to process what he’s just heard, mind needing to go from barely working at all to working a million miles a minute, but when he does, his jaw drops open and he turns a light on so fast he’s surprised the switch doesn’t break right off. His heart is hammering blood through his veins and his fingers twitch, but it’s got nothing to do with sex. He blinks twice, and then twice again, unable to believe what he’s seeing, and he can’t catch his breath.

Right there, right in front of Brendon, holding him at arm’s length in fact, is a supremely pissed off looking Jon. 

“ _Jon?_ ” It takes all of the breath left in Brendon’s body to say the name, and a sucking vacuum howls in his chest for the endless moment it takes before he hears a reply.

“Who the hell else would it be?” 

The vacuum rips its way out of Brendon and he pounces on Jon, holding him as tight as he can, hand fisted in Jon’s too-long hair and face buried in his neck. “Jon. _Jon_ , God. Oh my God…”

Jon is stiff for a second, but Brendon can feel the exact moment when apprehensive wins out over angry. Arms close around his hitching shoulders and hold on while he clings, Jon’s name spilling past his lips over and over.

“Bren, hey.” Jon’s voice has gone soft and comforting. “What is it?” 

Brendon pulls himself away, but only far enough to take Jon’s face in his hands and really look at him, and when he does, it’s _Jon_ looking back at him. 

Jon. 

Jesus Christ. 

He feels the vacuum set up again, but is prepared for it, and if he just keeps sucking in oxygen, then maybe he can keep looking at Jon forever. “It—It’s you,” he whispers, running the fingers of one hand through the strands of Jon’s hair. “Jon…” 

“Of course it’s me,” Jon says, and there’s alarm clear in his face. “Brendon, you’re scaring me. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Brendon manages, his eyes still raking over Jon’s face, the ridge of his brow, the way the skin pulls over the muscles, the worried curve of his mouth. “Not one thing.”

“Something is clearly wrong,” Jon insists, not buying it, and Brendon lets out a hysterical bark of laughter and crushes Jon against him again.

“God. I missed you so much,” Brendon tells him, words slurring together in wonder. He squeezes his eyes shut, trying to block out everything but the feel of Jon in his arms. Maybe it’s just Brendon’s imagination, but he can feel the difference between Jon and Hector, the tension of their shoulders and the way they hold themselves, like a different crab moving into a similar shell, and maybe if he holds on to him tight enough, he can make sure Jon sticks this time. 

Jon’s fingers sink into Brendon’s hair and comb through it, trying to calm him down, and it’s such a Jon gesture that Brendon can’t help the noise that comes out, longing and just unbelief so thick he feels like he’s choking on them. 

“Brendon,” Jon soothes, rocking back and forth with Brendon in his arms. “Bren, I _just_ saw you this morning.”

Brendon shakes his head fiercely. “No, you didn’t.”

“Yes. I did. Ryan and Spencer want us to watch Hobo while they’re in New York. Our power went out this morning. Clam digging in Oregon. Remember?” 

Of course Brendon remembers. He’s held on to every detail of that day, the last day he saw Jon, maybe forever, for almost a year. 

He untangles himself from Jon, because Jon should be able to see Brendon’s face when he tells him this. He keeps his hands on Jon’s shoulders, thumbs stroking the side of his neck, and Jon watches him, anxious. “That was ten months ago,” Brendon says gently, or as gently as you can tell a person a thing like that, anyway. “Jon… It’s September.”

“Brendon, no—“

“ _Yes_. Look.” He grabs his phone off the bedside table and opens it up, showing Jon the date. 

Jon frowns as he looks at the date. “This is wrong,” he says.

Brendon shakes his head. He’d give anything to have it be wrong. “It’s not.” 

“It has to be.” His words are insistent, but there’s an uneasiness creeping across his face. 

Brendon retrieves the shoebox of letters from under the bed and lays it in Jon’s hands, feeling like he’s torturing a kitten. “I kept these for you.”

Jon gives Brendon a look and lifts the lid, flipping through the letters. His brow furrows in confusion and he runs a hand through his hair and down the side of his face, a classic Jon move, and snatches his hand away like it’s been burned. The blood drains from his cheeks and he stares at his hand in horror, eyes big, mouth open, and Brendon knows he doesn’t remember shaving. 

“Are you okay?” Brendon asks, and he almost wants to laugh that it’s _him_ asking _Jon_ that and not the other way around. 

Jon looks from his hand to the letters with wide, scared eyes. His breathing is fast and frightened through his open mouth and he shakes his head. Brendon pulls him into his arms without another thought and whispers nonsense into his ear, rubbing his back in slow circles. 

“Brendon,” Jon chokes, and clutches at Brendon. His whole body trembles and his voice is his freaking-out voice. “Don’t let go of me.”

“I won’t,” Brendon promises. He’s seriously considering the logistics of not ever loosening his hold on Jon for the rest of forever. “I won’t.”

It’s the second last Tuesday in September. Jon has been gone three hundred and fifteen days, and now he’s back, really back, and falling apart in Brendon’s arms. It’s a situation that promises to be hard and painful and messy, and Brendon can’t feel a thing except for blinding, debilitating gratitude.

***

Brendon stays up all night watching Jon sleep.

Jon had curled almost into a ball by the time Brendon had managed to convince him to try and get some sleep, but now he’s stretched out again, the long axis of his body parallel to Brendon’s, and they’re touching every few inches. Their feet are wound together, the bend of their knees angling their hips toward each other’s. Brendon’s fingers rest in the dips between Jon’s ribs and the steady rise and fall of his hand on Jon’s warm skin puts a dull, perfect ache in Brendon’s chest when he watches it. Jon’s hands curl into loose fists over Brendon’s heart. Their foreheads touch, and Jon puffs out shallow breaths against Brendon’s face. His features are slack with exhaustion. Even asleep he looks tired. 

He’s a sight for sore eyes, and Brendon has never seen anything better in his life.

Jon whimpers in his sleep and Brendon cards his fingers through Jon’s hair, brushing it back behind his ear where it’s fallen into his face. Having his hair played with is Jon’s Achilles heel, turns him into a puddle of goo, and being asleep grants him no immunity. He nuzzles his face closer to Brendon, burrowing into Brendon’s chest, and Brendon presses a lingering kiss to the crown of his head, letting his fingers still when Jon settles. 

Brendon calls in to work at five o’clock in the morning, keeping his voice low so as not to wake Jon, whose eyes had only closed when Brendon had promised to absolutely not go anywhere, of course he’d be here when Jon woke up, swear to God, cross his heart. It’s an unnecessary promise; Brendon would rather cut both his hands off than have Jon wake up alone. He’s as quiet as he can be, but the pitch of his voice causes Jon to stir, and he twitches in Brendon’s arms just as Brendon finishes, startling himself awake in a very un-Jon-like manner. 

Jon blinks at Brendon a few times, and Brendon is glad that he’s there to lay a hand flat on Jon’s chest when he remembers, deflating and going pale in the grey morning light. 

“It was real.” It’s not a question, and Brendon can tell Jon wants to be contradicted.

“Yeah,” he says. He rubs soothing circles on Jon’s chest instead. 

“September what?” 

“Twenty-third.” 

Jon is quiet for a minute, his mouth a thin line, and when he speaks, his voice is small and wobbly. “Two thousand and nine?” 

Brendon’s heart breaks. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, Jon, two thousand and nine.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Jon manages, and Brendon knows what he really means is _I’m scared_. 

“I know,” he tells him, responding to both parts. He tilts his forehead against Jon’s and presses briefly. “But we’re together. You and me. We’ll figure it out. I promise.”

“How do you figure out something like this?” Jon asks, hopeless.

He’s a mirror image of December Brendon. Brendon can remember the overwhelming feel of every single thing, the way the simplest tasks felt foreign, alien. He remembers the gaps between knowing something needed to happen and actually making it happen, gaps that should have been nothing but a hop-over that yawned into canyons so wide Brendon didn’t think there was another side at all.

“One day at a time, that’s how,” he says, brushing his thumb over Jon’s cheekbone. “It’s morning,” he continues. “What do we always do in the morning?”

Jon swallows and pulls in a shaky breath. “Me coffee, you shower, then switch.”

Brendon nods, rubbing his nose against Jon’s. “Why don’t we both just stick to coffee for now, okay?”

Jon nods and hugs Brendon tight, tucking his chin into the crook of Brendon’s shoulder. “I love you, Brendon,” he whispers.

Brendon puts everything on hold, just for a minute, just to let the words sink into his skin and his brain, and his voice is uncharacteristically gruff when he says, “Say that again.”

“I love you.”

Brendon lets his eyes fall closed and wraps his arms around Jon’s torso, squeezing tight enough that he’s probably restricting Jon’s breathing but not caring. Jon is solid and warm against him and the last ten months slip away like they’re nothing. 

“Jon,” he breathes. “I love you, too.”

Jon has been gone for ten months, but for him, it’s been no time at all—a day, maybe less. He’s scared and confused and maybe a little bit crazy-pants, but he’s still Jon, still the only thing Brendon wants, and as long as he still loves Brendon—well, Brendon thinks he’ll be okay with just about any Jon he can get his hands on.

***

Jon does much better when he’s got something to do. He’s a putterer and has been ever since Brendon met him, and it’s comforting to see Jon’s more familiar traits reinforced. He’s also a secret perfectionist and making coffee is one of those things that he talks about the whole time he’s doing it, giving a little lecture to anyone who’ll listen on the finer points of brewery. More than once Brendon has walked into the kitchen to find Jon making coffee, chattering away to no one but Dylan and Clover, and has been able to stealthily back away the way he came, avoiding being caught up in a hailstorm of alkaloid degradation or flavenoids or whatever other coffee-related made up word of the day Jon has on his mind.

This time, Jon doesn’t talk. He works in silence, but it’s not a silence that Brendon feels like he needs to worry about, and the apartment fills with the kind of comforting, bustling sounds that only the presence of another person can bring. 

Brendon watches Jon make coffee and soaks the sight up like a sponge—the way Jon jostles the spoon to get his scoops perfectly rounded, the way he crouches down to make sure the little trapdoor is open between the grounds carriage and the carafe. Brendon always forgets to do that and since Jon has been gone, Brendon has come out of the shower no less than twenty-one times to find the counter a gloppy, groundsy mess. Jon uses the last of what’s in the canister, and refills it from the can in the cupboard, another thing that Brendon never does, always waking up to an empty canister and cursing his former self. 

“This coffee’s terrible,” Jon says when it’s finished and they’re both sitting at the kitchen table, mugs steaming in front of them.

Brendon lets out a little laugh at the scrunched up look on Jon’s face. Coffee-snobbery is another one of Jon’s familiar traits. “Yeah,” he smiles. “Good thing there’s a hot ex-barista to go with it or I’d ask for my money back.”

“Shut up,” Jon says, but allows himself a tiny smile and takes another sip. He makes the face again. “I can’t believe you bought this swill.” 

It’s not really much of anything, but it’s almost normal, and Brendon starts to feel like maybe he can do this, maybe he can take care of Jon, be what he needs.

They sit side-by-side at the table, their legs pressed together from knee to ankle, and go over what Jon remembers, which is pretty well nothing beyond being in Hyde Park and sitting on a bench getting ready to do some custom work. 

“Like it was yesterday,” he says ironically, and Brendon curls his foot around Jon’s.

Jon has no idea where he’s been. He doesn’t remember being Hector Graabe, and he doesn’t remember meeting Brendon again after being gone for eight months. 

Brendon does his best to fill Jon in, but his experience is sorely limited. He doesn’t know where Jon was for those eight months, doesn’t know what he did or even if he was Hector the entire time. He can only tell him what Hector told Brendon—that he lived far away and did computer repair. Brendon spends this entire part of the conversation kicking himself for being a selfish dick, for never asking Hector about his life outside of Brendon.

Jon needs a fucking doctor, post-haste, someone who can tell them what happened to him and why, and most importantly, if it’s going to happen again. They get as far as agreeing on that when all of a sudden Jon inhales, sharp and deep, and the blood drains out of his face. 

“Jon? What? What is it?”

Jon looks at him with wide deer eyes, too dark in his white, white face. His tongue darts out to lick his dry lips and the words “I need an HIV test” fall out of his mouth. 

“What? No. No, you don’t. No.”

“Did you ever ask me?” Jon looks hopeful, desperate. 

Brendon’s overactive imagination supplies a detailed mental picture of what it would be like to bury Jon and before he knows it, he’s got his head on Jon’s shoulder, tears soaking into the fabric of Jon’s shirt. 

Jon’s got one hand in Brendon’s hair and the other grabs at his shoulder. “Hey, no, Bren, don’t cry,” he mumbles into Brendon’s hair. “It’s okay, it’ll be okay.” 

But it’s not okay. The idea that Brendon could lose Jon again, after all that, this time for good… It’s too much, and it should be Brendon comforting Jon, not the other way around. 

It’s the first day Jon has been back. It’s not even nine in the morning yet and so far, Jon would like to _not_ have HIV—a perfectly reasonable request—and Brendon can’t even tell him if that’s likely or not because he never bothered to ask Hector a goddamn thing about his life in the whole two months that he had with him. 

Jon is what Brendon needs—as himself, as someone else, however he can get him he’ll take him—but Brendon is what Jon’s got, and Brendon is terrified that he won’t be enough.

***

“We should make some calls,” Brendon says that afternoon.

Jon looks up from where he’s cuddling Clover, muttering endearments to her and asking if she missed him while he was gone, scratching in front of her ears the way she likes the best. Brendon wonders if the cats can tell the difference between Jon and Hector, if their little cat brains catalogue the different names they get called and the different petting strategies Jon and Hector employ. Jon’s a big fan of the side pat, while Hector likes to stick his fingers in between their toes.

“What do you mean?”

“I, um, I kind of… didn’t really tell people about Hector.”

Jon raises an eyebrow. “I thought you said he was around for like, two months.”

Brendon swallows and nods and feels like the worst person in the history of the world. “Yeah.”

Jon looks dumbfounded. “But… This is Chicago. We know everyone here. How does nobody know?”

Brendon shrugs and looks anywhere but at Jon. “I don’t really know that many people anymore.”

“So… Wait, no one knows I’m here? Not my parents or Spencer and Ryan or anybody?” Jon looks like Brendon has just offered him irrefutable evidence that everyone really does have an invisible third eye. 

“Well, Spencer and Ryan know,” Brendon corrects. “I, uh, kind of needed a second opinion.”

“On _what_?”

“On whether or not I was imagining you.”

Jon’s face says that he cannot believe one fucking piece of this reality. Brendon can hardly blame him. “You thought—“ He stops, and Brendon looks when Jon puts a hand on his knee. His face is serious. “Brendon, what did you think happened to me?”

Brendon chews the inside of his cheek and makes some sort of shrug-headshake gesture, but it’s enough for Jon’s eyes to go big with sympathy and shock, and Jon’s hand tightens on Brendon’s knee. 

“Is that what everybody thinks?” he asks quietly.

Brendon chews his cheek again and tastes blood.

“Okay,” says Jon, and takes a deep breath, steeling himself. “Okay. Let’s make some calls.”

“I’ll do it. If you want,” Brendon offers, willing to do anything just to fucking start getting some things right. “You don’t have to.”

“We’ll do it together,” he says, lacing his fingers in with Brendon’s. A smile blooms on his face out of nowhere and he ducks his head.

“What?” Brendon can’t imagine what—in a day that has already included ten months of memory lost, the possibility of a lethal infection, and learning that everyone you know thinks you’re dead—could possibly make Jon smile like that. 

“How great would it be if I could really open with _The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated_?”

Brendon wonders if there will ever come a day when Jon stops surprising him with what a total fucking weirdo he can be, and thinks that there’s no one on Earth he’s prouder to know.

***

Ryan and Spencer don’t need to be told Jon is back.

They know seconds after they walk in the door, Jon’s “Hi, guys,” measured and careful and considerate, and the both of them gape at Jon and then at Brendon and then back to Jon, their heads moving together in perfect tandem, the synchronization only broken when Spencer rushes Jon and wraps his arms around him, spinning him around before setting him down again and proceeding to hug the life out of him. 

“Jon _Walker_ ,” Spencer says, astonished. 

Ryan shuffles over, wooden as a marionette. Jon untangles himself from Spencer and slides his arms around Ryan, who blinks owlishly, but remains otherwise motionless until Jon says wryly, “Long time, no see, Ross.” Ryan laughs once, loud and sharp, and his matchstick arms come up and lock around Jon, holding on for all he’s worth.

***

Brendon finishes brushing his teeth and finds Jon sitting cross-legged on the bed with his hands in front of him, studying them carefully.

“What’s up?” Brendon asks, when Jon doesn’t look up from his hands.

“My guitar calluses are gone,” he says, frowning. “Guess I wasn’t doing much of that anymore.”

Brendon waits a beat, considering. “Do you want to know about him?” he asks. “Hector?”

Jon looks up, surprised, like he didn’t think there was anything to know, and nods. 

Brendon climbs into bed and tells Jon stories about Hector, about how he twice rendered Spencer speechless (“once with a tough guy Ryan Atwood impression and once with some mad tech support skills”), about how he hates birds, about his hair kink that he shares with Jon, and about how he and Brendon watched _Aladdin_ together on Jon’s birthday, Hector humming along with the music when the words were too complicated to pick up. 

Brendon talks and talks and by the time his voice turns rough, well before he’s run out of stories, Jon is already long asleep, head heavy on Brendon’s shoulder.

***

They take the L to go and see Jon’s family for brunch the next day. Spencer offers to lend them his car, but Jon wants to take the train. Privately, Brendon thinks he just wants some extra time to psych himself up for the big family reunion. It’s not that Jon doesn’t want to see them, but the time gap prevents him from feeling the same urgency as everyone else, only makes him feel uncomfortable and sorry that he’s caused the people he loves this pain, however indirectly. Jon holds Brendon’s hand the whole train ride, tight enough to make his bones ache, but Brendon wouldn’t dream of him letting go.

They get off the train and walk through Jon’s parents’ neighborhood, Jon’s old neighborhood, really, since the Walkers still live in the same house that Jon grew up in, and Brendon lets Jon lead the way. He’s got the directions written down and in his pocket, but he leaves them there, thinking that Jon could probably use this one.

When they arrive at the house, Jon’s parents and brothers are outside on the step. Jon’s fingers tighten in Brendon’s and then he’s swallowed up in a flurry of arms as his family descends on him, touching his face and ruffling his hair. 

Brendon stands back, away from them, separate, wanting to give them their moment, and still feeling like a traitor to these people who’ve been nothing but kind to him. He’s watching them take turns hugging Jon a second or maybe third time, and feels a rare and unfamiliar pang of missing his own family, who never knew Jon was missing, who don’t even know Jon exists, period. 

“Brendon Boyd Urie,” a voice says to his right before pulling him into a bear hug. It’s Bill. 

“This is a fucking family victory,” he says fiercely next to Brendon’s ear. “You’re not gonna cheap out on us, are you, kid?” 

They don’t know what Brendon did, and they never will. Brendon is too ashamed to tell them, Jon too compassionate. But as Brendon gets passed from Walker to Walker, eventually winding up next to Jon in the middle of a giant six-person group hug, he starts to feel like they’d forgive him if they found out.

***

On Friday, Jon decides to go through the letters.

The shoebox is full to bursting. The cardboard strains at the corners and the lid doesn’t want to close. There must be two hundred pieces of mail in there, but Jon just shakes out the box and begins sorting the letters into piles, waving off Brendon’s offer of help. 

It takes all day. Jon sits there with a letter opener and a cup of coffee that Brendon refills every hour and works. He opens every letter, even the ones that are clearly just junk mail, and puts it carefully into what seems to Brendon to be a random pile, the piles eventually pinwheeling all around him, like spokes of a wheel. Brendon can’t figure out Jon’s system, can’t figure out why an auto insurance renewal membership goes in the same pile as a bank statement, but why bank statements don’t go in the same pile as credit card bills. Or why sometimes they do. 

Jon sorts every letter, and when he’s finished, he picks up the pile nearest to his left hand and starts to read. He reads every word like it’s going to be on the final exam, and when he’s done with that pile, he moves on to the next. By the time he’s hit the third pile, Brendon’s realized there are ten in total and that the letters are organized chronologically. 

Jon’s created a timeline of the months he’s been away, one that tells the story of what the lost days held in per annum interest rates and assurances that he, too, could already be a winner. 

It’s the saddest fucking thing Brendon has ever seen.

When they go to bed that night, Jon waits until the lights have been turned off to say, “Why’d you keep all those letters?” His voice is quiet and flat, like he doesn’t care what the answer is, but Brendon knows better.

“I needed to believe you’d come home,” he says honestly.

Brendon can feel Jon’s shoulders heave as he sighs. “Do you think I have?” Jon asks. “Come home?”

“Yeah,” Brendon says, and tries to believe enough for both of them. “Yeah, Jon, I do.”

“Do you think I’ll stay?”

“I don’t know,” Brendon answers, knowing that it’s not what Jon needs. “But I will, even if you don’t. I’ll stay. I’ll keep looking.” He presses a kiss to Jon’s forehead and strokes his hair, just once. “There’s nowhere in here that you could disappear that I wouldn’t find you. Do you believe me?”

Jon doesn’t answer, but he nods, jerky and quick, and when he kisses Brendon, the first time since he’s been back, his mouth trembly and tasting of salt even though his cheeks are dry, Brendon hears an echo of a previous request ( _Don’t let go of me_ ) and does his best to answer in kind ( _I won’t_ ).

***

Tom has been Jon’s best friend since they were kids, like a more well-rounded, less co-dependent version of pre-gay-love Ryan and Spencer (if there ever even was such a thing). They went to the same schools, played on the same baseball teams, and learned to hold their liquor together, fifteen years old in Tom’s basement watching old John Cusack movies. Brendon remembers getting introduced to Tom when he and Jon first got together and wanting to hate him a little bit for being such a likeable jerk, because how was Brendon ever going to compete with fifteen-plus years of best friend-ery if they guy wasn’t even a dick? In the end, it turned out he couldn’t, hate him that is, because Tom was exactly the kind of best friend a guy like Jon would have—a dude, with a loyalty blind spot a mile wide, zero self-preservation, and woefully misguided footwear ideals. They’re brothers, the kind that you get to choose once in a lifetime, and ever since Jon disappeared, Tom, like Brendon, has been adrift.

On the fourth day Jon has been back, Tom’s band wraps up the tour they’re on and Tom comes back to Chicago on the 11:36 flight out of Atlanta. Tom had been ready to cancel the whole rest of the tour when he’d gotten the call from Jon, but Jon had said no. 

“Just give me a couple days to get used to things,” he’d said into the phone, and Brendon could hear Tom’s objections clear through the receiver. “Tommy. Please. Just a couple of days.”

Tom had relented, of course, because Jon had pulled out the big guns, the name that no one but Jon has called him for the past ten years, and responded petulantly that the tour was over on Saturday and if Jon wasn’t ready by then, well then that was his tough titties. 

Which is how Brendon and Jon come to be standing in the nearly vacant Chicago airport at midnight, blowing on cups of shitty airport coffee for something to do, waiting for Tom’s plane to land. 

It’s late (of course) but when it lands, Tom stands out clear from the rest of the crowd. He’s pushing past people, running and jumping like an idiot, and for all of that, when he finally spots Jon and Brendon near the baggage carousel, he freezes and then starts walking slowly toward them, like he’s afraid Jon will run off if approached too fast. He reaches out a hand and jabs Jon in the shoulder hard—a test, Brendon knows, to see if he’s real (he knows the feeling)—before throwing his arms around Jon and shutting his eyes tight.

“You ever disappear like that again and I’ll rip your fucking balls off,” Brendon hears Tom whisper into Jon’s neck. Jon nods his acceptance of Tom’s terms, and they don’t let go of each other for a long time. 

“Go get my bag, emo kid,” Tom says finally, ruffling Jon’s hair and earning himself a scowl. “I want to proposition your boyfriend and it’s just no fun if you’re right here.”

Jon’s scowl flips into a smile and he hugs Tom again. “It’s really good to see you,” he says quietly.

“I missed you, too, Jonny.”

Jon goes to stand in the crowd waiting for luggage, and Brendon notices the way he and Tom both position themselves to make sure they have a clear view of Jon the whole time.

“How are you doing?” Tom asks Brendon, and Brendon laughs an exhausted laugh.

“No complaints here,” he says, watching Jon stand on his tiptoes to try to see the bags.

“You look tired.”

“It’s been a busy week.” In actuality, Brendon hasn’t slept a wink since Jon came back, too afraid to shut his eyes in case he opens them and Jon is gone again, the magic switch in his brain having flipped at some point during the night. 

Brendon can’t tell if Tom buys his lie or not, but he supposes it doesn’t matter when Tom wraps Brendon up in a hug, hooking his chin over Brendon’s shoulder. 

“You did good, Brendon,” he whispers into Brendon’s ear. “You brought him home.”

***

Brendon is making toast the next day (Sunday? Tuesday again already? He can’t tell) and spaces out while he watches the little elements heat up to a bright, glowy orange.

“Hey! Brendon!”

Brendon blinks, and sucks in a startled breath when he sees orange flames licking out the sides of the toaster oven. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” He opens the door and blows the flames out, revealing two charred and still smoking pieces of toast. “Son of a bitch,” he mutters, and rubs tiredly at his nose. Already the entire kitchen reeks of burned carbon. 

“What happened? Didn’t you see that?” Jon asks, giving Brendon a suspicious look.

“I just got distracted. Fuck,” he says mournfully. “That was all of the bread.”

“You look tired.”

“Why does everybody keep saying that?”

“What’s four times sixteen?”

Brendon groans and opens his phone. 

“In your _mind_ , Brendon.”

“Do you know what time this says?” Brendon asks, showing Jon the display. “It says it’s too-early-for-math-o’clock.”

“It’s one-thirty in the afternoon!”

“Exactly.”

“Why aren’t you sleeping?”

“Well, like you just said, it’s one-thirty—“

“I mean at night, jackass.”

“I sleep—“

“No, you don’t. You’re always awake before me and I always fall asleep before you. You walk around like a zombie and just now, you almost burned down the whole house without even noticing. Why aren’t you sleeping?”

Brendon tries to think of a good answer while weighing the likelihood of Jon ever letting this go against the probability that he, Brendon, will have an exhaustion-induced heart attack, and when he realizes that he’s inadvertently trying to do math (fucking Jon Walker), he gives up and tells the truth. 

“I can’t wake up and have you be gone again,” he says, going back to examining the charred toast. Fuck. He really fucking wanted that toast. 

“Brendon.” Jon looks horrified. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Don’t say that,” Brendon snaps angrily. Distantly, mental-Brendon is windmilling his arms and screaming at himself to shut the fuck up. “You can’t say that. You don’t know.”

Jon blinks wide eyes at Brendon and his mouth opens and closes repeatedly. “You’re right,” he says finally. “Okay, Brendon, you’re right, but there’s other ways. Hell, we can call Ryan and have him come over and babysit me if we need to. Just until we see a doctor, okay? You need to sleep.”

“I’m supposed to take care of you.” Brendon is having a fair bit of trouble organizing his thoughts into much of anything, but he knows that for sure.

But Jon is shaking his head no. “No, Bren. We’re supposed to take care of each other.”

Brendon has never been very good at being alone. He went from giant family to no family and it was the hardest thing he’d ever done until he’d gone from half of Brendon-and-Jon to the whole of just Brendon. He’d had Ryan and Spencer, and he never would have made it without their help, but he was still suddenly alone in a way he thought he’d never be again, and he had needed to relearn how to live his life, how to do things for himself again, things that he’d always just taken for granted Jon would be there to do, and then he just wasn’t.

“I missed you while you were gone,” Brendon says, suddenly bone tired. 

“I know,” Jon says sadly. “Let’s go to bed. I’ll call Ryan right now, okay? Just go get ready. I promise I won’t let you fall asleep until he gets here.”

Brendon brushes his teeth and changes—sweatpants, since Jon has categorically refused to sleep naked with Brendon until his HIV results come back (“and come back _negative_ , Brendon, Christ”), and isn’t that a fucking downer of a thought. 

A knock sounds at the door and Ryan sticks his head into the room, jarring Brendon out of his dazed wallowing.

“Brendon? Hey.” He comes in and sits down on the edge of the bed. “Me and Spence are going to stay here for a couple days, okay? In the music room. We’ll keep that JWalk in line. Don’t you worry.” He rubs Brendon’s knee. “Everything will work out.”

“Yeah,” says Brendon, and then gives a little laugh. “Ryan Ross. How did you get to be such a fucking optimist, anyway?”

Ryan smiles back and shrugs. “Must be the company I keep.”

Jon comes in, and Ryan shuts the door behind him when he leaves, the soft click the last sound that Brendon hears before he’s hurtling into unconsciousness, Jon’s arm warm and heavy over his side.

***

Brendon sleeps for a day and a half, and when he wakes up, Jon is still there. He hasn’t evaporated or walked out or forgotten who Brendon is, but just because those things didn’t happen this time doesn’t mean they couldn’t still happen the next.

Jon’s awake and lying on his side, watching Brendon sleep. Brendon would call him a creep, but he spent the better part of a week doing the exact same thing, and Jon, at least, probably slept for at least a third of the time that Brendon was out. 

“Will you tell me what happened to you?” Jon asks, no greeting whatsoever. “While I was gone?”

Brendon blinks. “Why do you think something happened to me?”

Jon traces down the side of Brendon’s face with the tip of one finger before answering. “Your eyes are sad now,” he says. 

Brendon doesn’t know why, but hearing Jon say that puts a tennis ball sized lump in his throat. He feels like a liar, saying “I’m not sad” when his eyes are clearly welling up with tears, but he’s really not. 

“Some hurts take longer to heal,” Jon says cryptically. 

Brendon doesn’t exactly know what he means by that, but he burrows his face into Jon’s chest and after a minute, starts to talk anyway, and with every story he tells Jon about missing him so much his teeth ached, he feels lighter, stronger, closer to Jon and closer to the Brendon that he used to be.

***

Brendon watches Jon blow a tuft of hair out of his eyes seven times while he’s trying to do a crossword. It’s always the same formula: a puff of breath out of the side of his mouth, a tuck behind his ear when that doesn’t work, and lastly a hilarious, and frankly adorable, little head flick when it falls out into his eyes again. Finally, he throws his pencil down in frustration.

“Fuck this hair,” grumbles Jon. “Jesus, how did I ever live like this?”

“Want a haircut?” Brendon asks, snipping a pair of scissors in Jon’s direction. 

“God, yes.” Jon plunks himself down on a kitchen chair at once, and Brendon laughs and makes him go get a towel and spritzer bottle.

He washes Jon’s hair before anything. Jon’s head is in the kitchen sink and his hands tighten on the counter when Brendon works the shampoo into his hair, making sure his fingers dig hard but not sharp into Jon’s scalp. Jon groans more than once and Brendon is glad that Ryan and Spencer both went to their offices to work today. When Brendon rinses his hair out, Jon’s eyes are unfocused and fuzzy.

“All done?” he asks, somehow sounding both turned on and pouty at the same time.

“Just this part,” Brendon assures him.

He sits Jon back in the chair and snips away, wet curls falling to the floor, and the more hair Brendon cuts away, the more Jon sits up straight. He hums every time Brendon lets his fingers brush through the new, shorter hair to fluff it up in order to gauge its length, and when he bows his head to let Brendon get the back, Brendon can’t resist pressing an open-mouthed kiss to the back of his neck, smiling at the sudden breath Jon draws. 

The only hiccup comes when Brendon pulls out a razor. Jon hasn’t shaved in a day or two and he’s all prickly, but when Brendon sits in his lap and puts the hot cloth on Jon’s face, his eyes snap open and he jerks upright in his chair, almost sending Brendon to the floor in a heap. 

“Not that,” he says quickly. “It—It’s too dangerous. Besides,” he adds, running one hand over his scruff and keeping the other on Brendon’s hip to hold him in place, “I was thinking of growing it back in. An old look for the old me. What do you think?”

Brendon leans in, trying his best to ignore Jon’s reference to dangerous activities and what that could mean for the rest of his life, and rubs his cheek against Jon’s, testing its sandpaper roughness. 

“Works for me,” he says softly, and winds his fingers into Jon’s new haircut, which is really just his old haircut, and spends the next hour in Jon’s lap, getting re-acquainted with beard burn.

***

The trip to Jon’s fancy neurologist is a non-event.

Jon’s parents know a guy who knows a guy, and they pull every string in the book to arrange the consult. They pay for the whole thing, get all the bells and whistles—MRI, CT scan, EEG, and a lengthy psych evaluation—but in the end, the doctor can’t tell Jon a fucking thing about what happened to him, only what didn’t.

Jon doesn’t have a brain tumor. He doesn’t have a brain bleed or lesions or goop in places that should be goop-free. He hasn’t forgotten things he should know and he doesn’t know things he shouldn’t be able to. He reasons just fine, prioritizes normally, and can judge the passage of time. He can recite his credit card numbers from memory, but that’s because he’s a freak weirdo, not because he’s messed up in the head. 

The doctor says Jon is perfectly healthy, his case a mystery, “one for the journals”. The guy’s a dick, and Brendon thinks he’s going the right way for a punch in the face.

Brendon wants to demand more tests, wants to tell them to get in there and fix whatever the fuck is wrong with Jon, because perfectly healthy people don’t just _forget_ ten months of their lives, that’s ridiculous, but when he looks over at Jon, he changes his mind.

Jon looks haggard and drained. The shorter hair makes the lines of his face seem sharper, almost breakable. He looks old, washed-out, like a Polaroid left in the sun, and Brendon just wants to take him away from this place, take him home where Spencer is at this very moment making Jon’s favorite chicken wings for dinner, wrap him up in as many blankets as they have, and never ever let go of him. 

“Jon. We’re here,” Brendon says, when Spencer’s car is back in its spot, engine turned off. Jon hasn’t said a word the entire drive back from the hospital, sitting in the passenger seat and staring at his folded hands, and Brendon is starting to get a little freaked out. 

“Jon,” he says again, when Jon doesn’t answer. “Is that you in there?” he asks, trying to get a smile out of Jon before he really thinks about what he’s asking, and has a moment of sheer, breathless panic that maybe it isn’t, maybe he’s let Jon slip away again and not even realized it.

“Do you ever wish you hadn’t hitched your wagon to the crazy train?” 

Brendon is so relieved that it’s Jon responding that his mind literally cannot process the words. “ _What?_ ”

“You heard me.”

“You—Are you seriously asking me if I wish I’d never met you?”

“That’s not a denial.”

“ _No_ , I don’t wish that, Jesus. And also, shut the fuck up. You’re not crazy.”

Jon laughs, bitter and ugly and all wrong. “I can’t remember the last ten months of my life, Brendon. I invented at least one completely separate person. Sounds like crazy to me.”

“Well, it’s not.”

“Were you in love with him?”

Brendon is taken aback by the sudden subject change, but answers the question. “Yeah.” He notices Jon doesn’t use Hector’s name, realizes that he never has. 

“If he came back, would you still be?”

Brendon doesn’t like where this is going. “I wouldn’t know how not to be.”

There’s a long pause from Jon and then he asks, in a voice that’s been carefully flattened, “Would you tell me? If you loved him more than me?”

Brendon’s lungs stop drawing in air and Jon doesn’t wait for an answer, just barrels on ahead in that same dead voice.

“I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to unhitch.”

Brendon doesn’t know what’s happening here. It takes him a minute to figure out what Jon could possibly be referring to, and when he does, he can’t even speak. He doesn’t know how he could have dropped the ball this badly, can’t fathom a reality where he, Brendon, would ever willingly walk away from Jon, any Jon, and he’s still staring in narrow-eyed confusion when Jon speaks again.

“You deserve a real person, Brendon,” he says miserably, adding, “I can’t promise you anything,” and that is just so fucking far from the truth and Brendon has had enough.

“Are you kidding?” he demands. He means for it to come out forceful, but he just sounds winded, like he’s been kicked in the stomach. “Jon, Hector loved me. For real. He didn’t even know me and then we met and it was just like the first time, just like you and me. That doesn’t just _happen_.”

“Lots of people fall in love more than once.” He looks resigned, smaller than Brendon has ever seen him. 

“Not like this,” Brendon insists. “Jon. He was a different person, but he was _you_. Doesn’t that tell you anything?”

Jon doesn’t say anything, but Brendon can tell he’s listening.

“Do you want to know what it tells me?”

“What?”

“It tells me that you’ll always love me. Every time. It didn’t matter that you were Hector and it won’t matter if you’re someone else because it’ll always be true. _That’s_ what you can promise me. I’ve seen it happen. Jon—“ Brendon grabs both of Jon’s hands and can’t stop a real smile from spreading across his face, honestly amazed at the hand he’s been dealt in his life, all the bumps notwithstanding. “We’re fucking undeniable.”

Jon is on the cusp of being convinced, blinking and studying Brendon intently. “Do you really believe that?” he asks finally.

Brendon laughs a little, baffled and happy. “More every day.”

Jon grabs Brendon and pulls him halfway across the gear shift into a crushing hug. It’s awkward and a little uncomfortable, but Jon is holding Brendon like he believes him, and Brendon wouldn’t move for anything in the world. 

“Whatever I did to deserve you, there must have been an entire _planet’s_ worth of kittens involved,” Jon whispers into Brendon’s neck. 

“Lucky for me,” Brendon whispers back. 

They stay like that for a while longer, and when they get out of the car, Jon slides an arm around Brendon’s waist and kisses him, soft and sweet and real, and Brendon can see a lifetime’s worth of kisses just like this one in his future, his heart hammering how lucky he is through his veins, Jon’s mouth warm on his and feeling like home with every touch.

***

Ryan and Spencer move back to their own apartment shortly after. They’re happy to stay, but Brendon tells them, nicely, to get the fuck out. There’s nothing wrong with Jon, according to the professionals, and if Brendon lets himself get dependent on their being around all the time, Ryan and Spencer will never be allowed to leave. Besides, Ryan has been dropping hints and catalogues about super-deluxe-four-poster-bed-style air mattresses around Spencer, who has valiantly resisted buying such a thing (“It’s frivolous and ridiculous and I have no desire for a blow up _anything_ in my life, Ryan.”), but even Brendon can see that Spencer is faltering, already having proven himself woefully vulnerable to Ryan’s special brand of reasoning, which includes both the big eyes and something that has Spencer blushing fire-engine red whenever Ryan gives a pointed glance at the catalogue in his presence.

Still, it’s a difficult transition. Brendon doesn’t stop sleeping, but he doesn’t sleep well. He wakes up at the slightest noise, convinced it’s Jon either a) sleepwalking, b) climbing out the window in a fit of _where the fuck am I and whose bed am I in?_ , or c) possibly just outright dematerializing, Star Trek style, never to be seen or heard from again. The building shifts and creaks constantly in the falling temperature once the sun goes down, and Dylan snores an average of a billion times a night. One night it happens so often that Brendon crouches down beside him on the floor and begs him, _begs him_ , to be quiet. It doesn’t work. 

Brendon wakes up in the mornings almost more tired than when he went to bed, but just rested enough that it occurs to him that he doesn’t have to be asleep to have something happen to Jon. It could happen whenever, at any time, and he has a mini panic attack in the shower right after he realizes that Jon is (presumably) out in the kitchen, unsupervised and unguarded and could just walk out if he so chooses. Brendon meant what he said to Jon in the car—it wouldn’t matter who he was, there’s no way Brendon wouldn’t love him and there’s no way Jon wouldn’t love Brendon—but they’ve got to be _together_ for it to work. 

Jon isn’t having trouble sleeping himself, but Brendon’s restlessness is leaching into him, like seawater poisoning an estuary, and they’re both existing in a kind of weird shared tension, not angry or short, but easily influenced by the other’s mood, which in turn are just plain easily influenced. Clover doesn’t let Jon pick her up one day, spends all afternoon hiding under the bed to avoid him, and Jon is so upset that Brendon just _cannot_ decide what to make for dinner, so they wind up eating an entire meal’s worth of Saltines and peanut butter, watching _The OC_ and wishing aloud that more people were like Sandy Cohen.

They try to still do regular routine things, telling themselves and each other that it will get better, that they’ll get used to this new reality, and things will readjust back to normal. They mostly believe it, and as long as one of them stays in Camp We Can Do This, it’s enough to keep hope alive. It’s in this spirit that Brendon decides to clean the apartment. 

“No cleaning outfit?” Jon smiles, rubbing his hand through his hair tiredly. 

“Please,” Brendon scoffs. “This mission is hardly worthy of such noble garb.”

Jon snorts in reply, and says, “I guess you don’t need my help, then,” but he’s not fooling anybody (who does he think turned Brendon into a putterer to begin with?), and he starts stacking dishes. 

Jon washes, Brendon dries, and while they don’t say much, the slosh and clink of crockery in the water and the squeak-squeak of the dishtowel drying the excess water away is oddly soothing, and Brendon is again sure that they’re on the right track here, even if they don’t always know where they’re headed. 

“I’m going to take the trash out, okay?” Brendon says when the last plate is dried and put away. “I’ll be right back. Just, you know.” He quirks his mouth into a mocking smile. “Don’t go anywhere.”

Jon’s mouth twists painfully and Brendon feels a stab of guilt.

“Too soon?” he asks. “Too soon. Right. Sorry.”

He takes the trash downstairs and tosses it in the Dumpster, forgoing the elevator and racing back up the stairs two at a time, because even though he’s the one making stupid jokes about it, he’s also still petrified every time he leaves a room that Jon will vanish into thin air. His chest is still heaving when he walks through the door, half expecting an empty apartment.

Jon is standing stock-still in the middle of the living room, Brendon’s phone in the palm of his hand. 

“I’m negative,” he breathes, and the next thing Brendon knows, Jon is crashing against him and they’re touching everywhere they can.

***

“Did you ever do that with the other me?” Jon asks. “You know. Hector?”

Brendon shakes his head slowly, dragging the tip of his nose across Jon’s chest. “No,” he says. “When you came back, that was the first time we ever did anything like that.” A thought occurs to him. “But,” he adds hesitantly.

“What?”

“I have a confession to make.”

“Okay,” Jon says slowly. 

“I went on a date.”

“With Hector?”

“No. I mean, yeah, I went on lots of dates with Hector, but—I mean with someone else.”

“Oh.” Jon bites his already puffy lip and winces (Brendon would feel a little bad about that if he wasn’t so proud of it). He looks like he’s trying to keep something to himself, but it gets away from him, and he asks, “Did you sleep with him?”

Brendon exhales a tiny chuckle. “No, I, uh. I ran away in the middle of dinner.” He buries his face in Jon’s chest, sheepish.

There’s a pause. “Why?”

Brendon lifts his head to look at Jon, and if he didn’t already feel Jon in every last thud of his heart, the genuinely baffled look on his face would be the clincher.

“’Cause he wasn’t you,” he says honestly.

***

Brendon goes back to work on the first Monday in October. His boss asks him a dozen questions about how things are going and how if there’s anything he needs, and Brendon is reminded how lucky he is to work for a woman who not only loves Brendon and the work he does (“Please, kiddo,” she’d scoffed when Brendon had offered to resign during a particularly rough patch in January, “you’re a damn golden goose.”), but who also fucking loves Jon. She tells him as soon as he walks in that if he needs to start on half days, it’s no problem, but Brendon waves her off. He’s taken more time off in the last twelve months than he has since he got this job in the first place, and wishes don’t do dishes, or in Brendon’s case, buy groceries.

Brendon does a lesson for every instrument he knows that day. The constant change makes the day go quickly, and except for the knee-jerk worrying about Jon whenever he gets a spare minute to himself, he even mostly has a good time. His last student of the day is a thirteen year old kid named Suze, and when the two of them finish banging the shit out of a couple drum sets, her mom tells Brendon how happy she is for him that his “partner” is home again. Brendon thanks her and tries not to laugh as he imagines his life as a _Law and Order_ episode, the really old ones where the cops flash their badges every two seconds and introduce each other grouchily as “my partner, Detective so-and-so”. 

When he gets home, he can hear loud, off-key singing all down the hallway. There’s no Jon inside the apartment, but there is a note in Jon’s writing that read _At Ryan’s. Playing guitar!!!!!_ with a huge smiley face drawn at the bottom. Brendon smiles to himself and is debating going over there when he hears a door opening and closing, and then music in the hallway, getting closer. He hops up on the kitchen counter and takes a bite out of an apple from the bowl, swinging his feet and waiting for Jon.

“Brendon!” Jon beams when he spots him. He’s wearing a fedora. “You’re home!”

“Hey, partner,” Brendon grins.

Jon snickers and leans his guitar against the wall. “Pahdner,” he repeats, and pushes his way between Brendon’s dangling legs. “Going through a bit of a cowboy phase?” His eyes are sparkly and happy. “I’m so glad you’re back. I was _so_ bored.”

“Good thing Ryan was here, huh?” Brendon smiles, and holds out his apple for Jon to take a bite. He’s pretty sure Jon is baked right now and he watches with growing amusement as Jon sinks his teeth into the fruit and takes a giant bite. 

“We wrote a song about carpenter ants,” Jon says around a mouthful of apple. “They have no pants,” he adds, shaking his head seriously. 

Brendon laughs and kisses Jon’s silly, smiley, stoned mouth. He tastes like apples and pot, and when Jon pulls Brendon forward by the fabric of his shirt, Brendon hooks his ankles around Jon’s waist and holds on tight. 

“No pants, huh?” Brendon murmurs.

“You were gone _all day_ ,” Jon says back, and picks Brendon up right off the counter. It should be an impossible feat. They’re both roughly the same height, and Jon can’t even do one pushup—plus, high—but somehow it works and Jon’s tongue drags hot and insistent over Brendon’s as he walks them both to the bedroom. 

Afterwards, Brendon is boneless and snuggly, his thoughts liquid in his brain, and he doesn’t really register the words Jon is saying at first, only the rumbling he feels in the cheek that’s resting on Jon’s chest.

“Ryan thinks that Hector saved your life,” Jon is saying.

“Mmmm,” is as much as Brendon can handle. Jon’s words are nice—buzzy—and they make Brendon’s cheek tingle.

“He says he’s never seen anything like it.”

“Ryan does have all that fancy book learning,” Brendon agrees, only really half-listening, but wanting to use the phrase _book learning_. “He’s been known to be right a time or two.”

“I think he saved mine.”

Brendon rolls around at that so that he’s on his back and turns his head to look at Jon, surprised. “I thought you hated Hector.”

Jon shrugs, and keeps his fingers playing in Brendon’s hair, standing it up in little tufts and crushing it down again with the flat of his hand. “I did,” he says. “But then I thought about it and I realized that it’s because of him that I’m back where I’m supposed to be. That I’m back with you.” He gives Brendon a little smile, the lopsided one that makes Brendon’s heart flip over. “And he’s how I know I’ll always find my way back.”

It’s the first Monday in October. Jon’s been back for just under two weeks, and it’s not like Brendon imagined it would be, not like he never left, but Brendon can feel that Jon’s place in his life has, not shifted exactly, but settled, like a house easing into its foundation, cemented and unshakable, a safe haven in even the wildest of storms.

***

Mornings are the best.

Jon’s a serious snuggler, most of all when he’s just waking up, and he’ll roll over onto his side, pressing a scratchy kiss to the back of Brendon’s neck, and barnacle on for dear life, resisting the morning with everything he’s got. Somehow, even mostly unconscious, Jon knows that Brendon is completely incapable of denying him anything, and his sleepy, snuffly noises of protest whenever Brendon says that he’s “ _got_ to get up and go to work now, Jon, really” always manage to convince Brendon to stay and play the little spoon for ten, twenty, thirty minutes more.

They’re Brendon’s absolute favorite part of the day and even though they mean he goes to work hungry enough to eat a tofu horse, he wouldn’t trade them for all the bagels in the world.

***

They’re hanging out at Ryan and Spencer’s on a Thursday night, playing Mario Kart, and when Brendon comes out of the bathroom, he hears Jon talking in a serious voice, and eavesdrops like a total creep. He doesn’t hear what Jon says, but he hears Spencer’s response, warm and slightly condescending in that way that Spencer has, and Brendon can imagine the accompanying eye roll when he says, “Of course we took care of him, fool. What do you think family’s for?”

***

Brendon wakes up in the middle of the night to cold sheets.

He lies there in the dark, so caught up in the loop of _no-no-no-no-no_ that he doesn’t notice Jon padding across the room or the dip of the mattress as he climbs back into bed. In fact, he doesn’t notice anything—not the panicked stutter of his breathing, not the rigidity in his limbs, nothing at all— until he feels a broad, familiar hand on his shoulder. 

“Brendon? You okay?”

“Jon?” Brendon doesn’t recognize his own voice, high and reedy. 

“Hey. Yeah, it’s me.” Jon’s voice, on the other hand, is completely recognizable, and concerned. “What is it?” 

“You were gone.” He doesn’t mean for it to come out like an accusation, but it sounds like one all the same.

“Just to the bathroom,” Jon assures. “I’m right here.”

Brendon doesn’t say anything, can’t speak. 

“Bren? Hey, come on, turn around.”

“I can’t,” he whispers. Brendon doesn’t know what’s wrong with him. He’s been doing so good, hasn’t freaked out in weeks, but now, _fuck_. He feels brittle, fragile. The slightest wrong move and he’ll shatter. 

There’s a pause, and then Jon spoons up close behind Brendon and runs his palm down Brendon’s side, from rib to hip and back again, slow and soothing. It’s a bit like Jon’s petting him, like Brendon’s a spooked kitten. It feels good, and he sort of melts a little, his back relaxing into Jon’s bare chest. Jon curves his hand around Brendon’s hipbone and takes hold of Brendon’s dick, steady and reassuring, and Brendon can feel himself getting hard in Jon’s hand. 

“I’m right here,” Jon whispers and Brendon sighs. 

Jon jerks him slow and works his hips against Brendon’s ass, gentle thrusts in a matching rhythm. He presses soft, almost chaste kisses to Brendon’s bare shoulder, his neck, the nub of his spine, the whole time murmuring “Brendon, my Brendon” so proud and tender that Brendon feels himself on the edge from the first drag of the words over his skin. 

Brendon’s coming apart, breaking into a million separate pieces in Jon’s arms, but it’s okay, it’s fantastic even, because Jon will know where the pieces go and how they fit together, even after all this time and everything he’s forgotten.

Jon brushes his thumb over the head of Brendon’s cock, breathes “I love you” into his ear, and Brendon spills into Jon’s hand with a shuddering cry, Jon’s hips stilling as he comes too, groaning softly against Brendon’s neck. Brendon turns around, burrowing into Jon’s chest, safe even though he’s undone. 

“My Brendon,” Jon says again, softly into Brendon’s hair. He talks in a low murmur, endearments and promises and nonsense that somehow makes sense, and Brendon listens and lets Jon’s words put him back together again.

***

The day before Halloween, Jon goes out and gets himself a job at a new gallery that’s just opened up. He comes by Brendon’s work to tell him the good news, and when Brendon’s boss, who’s manning the reception desk today, asks him how he’s doing, if he’s re-adjusting to things, Jon just smiles and says that Brendon is taking good care of him. Brendon’s boss is so pleased with Jon’s answer that she tells Brendon to start his weekend early, and the two of them bring back a Brendon-and-Jon classic: getting Starbucks and making fun of the ridiculous quotes on the sides of their cups.

In the evening, Ryan and Spencer come over, and the four of them sit around, watching old _Arrested Development_ episodes and seeing who can hold a lungful of smoke in the longest without coughing. When the DVDs run out, they drag out the guitars and Jon makes Spencer a shaker-thing, which is really just a Coke can full of rice (“completely different than a tambourine, dude, come on”). Brendon pulls out a handsaw that he bought after seeing a YouTube video of a guy playing one, and manages not to cut himself showing them how kickass it sounds. 

They play until they’re burned out and falling asleep in each other’s laps, singing about how it’s only Halloween, about being a fighter of the Nightman, and about getting by with a little help from your friends.

***

Brendon Urie falls in love with Jon Walker for the first time on a rainy Saturday in April, water dripping in from the cracks in his ceiling and Jon’s hair tickling the underside of his chin while they watch _Homeward Bound_.

The second time is a sultry August Wednesday, when Jon doesn’t know he’s Jon, and he still looks at Brendon with that crinkly-eyed wonder, like Brendon is everything he could’ve ever asked for, and never considered he could really have. 

Brendon doesn’t notice any of the times after that, because it seems like every time he turns around he’s got a new reason to fall in love with Jon, and his lucky day changes from Sunday to every day he wakes up with Jon beside him, warm and cuddly and there, huffing out soft breaths on the back of Brendon’s neck.


End file.
